Freedreno's MSM DRM Driver Adds More Adreno Support, Speedbin Capability For Linux 5.12

The MSM Direct Rendering Manager driver originally developed as part of the Freedreno effort for open-source Qualcomm Adreno graphics on Linux while now supported by the likes of Google and Qualcomm's Code Aurora engineers has some notable changes in store for the next Linux kernel cycle.

New Adreno hardware support coming with Linux 5.12 is the A508, A509, and A512. The Adreno 508 is part of the Snapdragon 630 SoC, the mid-range Adreno 509 is found with the Snapdragon 636, and the Adreno 512 is what was found in the Snapdragon 660.

Besides lighting up some remaining Adreno 500 series graphics processors, another exciting addition of MSM with Linux 5.12 is speedbin support for the newer Adreno 600 series. Qualcomm's "Speedbin" support is for some GPUs that support a different/higher maximum frequency depending upon the platform. Determining this "Speedbin" frequency requires reading a special fuse value from the hardware. With Linux 5.12 this capability should be in place and is verified to be working for the Adreno 618 on select devices.

The MSM DRM driver with this next kernel merge window also has various Adreno 500 series fixes, specialized "qseed3lite" support for the Snapdragon 865 SoC, and other work. More details on these open-source Qualcomm Adreno kernel graphics driver changes via this pull request of the new material heading into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.12 merge window opening up in the next week or two.