The Major DRM Graphics Update Sent Into Linux 3.13

While many independent Phoronix articles have been covering the Linux 3.13 kernel changes for the individual DRM graphics drivers, the DRM subsystem pull request in its entirety was submitted yesterday for mainlining.

For those that didn't read the other articles yet, the open-source graphics driver highlights for Linux 3.13 include:

- AMD Hawaii open-source GPU support, a.k.a. the Radeon R9 290 series. The Linux 3.13 kernel needs to be used in conjunction with the new user-space bits.

- Radeon DPM and HDMI audio are finally enabled by default. Dynamic power management is crucial for new graphics cards to run at their appropriate clock speeds and for conserving energy and heat output when idling. HDMI audio has been enabled by default for a long time due to bugs, but that should all be cleared up now. AMD HDMI audio is better too on the sound driver side.

- Various Intel improvements including HDMI Stereo/3D support and initial Linux support for Intel Broadwell (Intel's 2014 Haswell successor). Broadwell should be spectacular! Valley View / Bay Trail has also been improved on Linux 3.13.

- The new Armada DRM driver has been merged.

- Nouveau has new power management and re-clocking code. NVIDIA Fermi/Kepler GPUs finally have some re-clocking support but it's rather useless and only works for the GPU core and not the video memory. At least now with Linux 3.13 there will be fan management support enabled by default.

- The Intel GMA500 Poulsbo driver now works with the Minnowboard.

- The MSM driver now has PRIME and render-nodes support.

- HDMI and GR24 support for the Tegra 4 within the Tegra DRM driver.

- Various other changes and bug-fixes.

The DRM pull request in full for the Linux 3.13 kernel can be read on the kernel mailing list.