Linux 3.12 To Support AMD "Berlin" HSA APU

The Linux 3.11 kernel hasn't even been released yet but the Radeon DRM driver changes for the Linux 3.12 kernel are already lined up and waiting to be pulled into the drm-next tree.

Alex Deucher publisher on Friday his feature Git tree for merging into the Linux 3.12 kernel. The key changes that will land in the kernel for the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver includes:

- Support for Dynamic Power Management on Radeon HD 8000 (Sea Islands / CIK) GPUs (the Linux 3.11 kernel brought Radeon DPM support for pre-8000 series hardware).

- Support for Active-State Power Management (ASPM) on Radeon HD 8000 series hardware (like the DPM support, pre-CIK hardware has ASPM handling as of Linux 3.11).

- Support for Berlin GPUs. Berlin is AMD's codename for their first server APU built on their much talked about Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). Berlin is an x86 APU and its graphics are derived from the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture (effectively the HD 7000 series). AMD Berlin APUs aren't expected to ship until H1'2014 so it's nice to see the graphics support land very early.

- Major ring handling clean-up.

- Removal of old 3D blit code for buffer object moves. Buffer object moves are now handled by the faster CP DMA or sDMA engines.

- Lots of bug-fixes.

The changes exciting us the most is the ASPM/DPM support coming for the AMD Radeon HD 8000 series hardware and then the early support for the AMD "Berlin" APU graphics.

The Radeon drm-next 3.12 pull request with the complete list of changes can be found on the dri-devel mailing list.