AMD Sends Out Linux Kernel Driver Support For Navi 12 GPUs

While we've already seen the RADV Vulkan driver land their slated support for Navi 12 GPUs on top of the recently launched Radeon RX 5700 "Navi 10" graphics cards, today is the first time we're seeing patches from AMD to wire in the support to the AMDGPU DRM Linux kernel driver for this next iteration of Navi.

A total of 36 patches were sent out a short time ago that add Navi 12 support to this DRM driver. The Navi 12 support comes in at just 1,388 lines of new code over the existing Navi 10 support, but some 1.1k lines of that are just auto-generated new header files.

With the patches there are code indications of a new VCN IP block (Video Core Next) compared to Navi 10, but for the most part this Navi 12 support is taking all the existing code paths and just minor code changes around the firmware handling, golden register settings, and other usual differences in new ASIC enablement.

This Navi 12 support due to its timing isn't material until the Linux 5.4 kernel with its merge window kicking off in September and then should debut as stable in November.