The Intel DRM Graphics Driver Improvements For Linux 3.16

Intel has lined up many graphics driver changes for Linux 3.16 and if you haven't been up to speed with all of our Linux 3.16 coverage, here's a concise overview of the Intel i915 DRM graphics driver changes for this next kernel version.

Intel continues to invest heavily into their Linux graphics driver through their Open-Source Technology Center. In fact, they already have features in testing for Linux 3.17. But for those wanting a quick and easy rundown of the new features for Linux 3.16 when it comes to the i915 kernel module, Daniel Vetter of Intel has written another nice write-up about the changes.

The key changes include:

- Initial support for Cherryview, the upcoming Atom SoC update with Broadwell derived graphics.

- Support for large cursors. On HiDPI displays rather than limiting to 64x64 cursors, cursors can now be up to the hardware limit of 256x256 pixels.

- Work towards atomic page-flipping.

- Run-time Power Management is now enabled by default for new platforms.

- Universal primary plane support is now in good shape.

- Improved out-of-memory handling.

- Command parser work for some OpenGL/OpenCL features of Haswell.

- Userptr support to let user-space wrap up any malloc'ed allocations into GEM buffer objects.

- Broadwell now supports eDRAM, GPU Turbo, and VEBOX2 support.

- GPU reset improvements.

- Prep work for Dynamic Refresh Rate Switching (DRRS).

- Other changes.

More information on these changes queued up for Linux 3.16 in the DRM subsystem can be found via Daniel's blog post. Besides Intel, there's also numerous Radeon changes and exciting Nouveau work.

Coming up soon will be the start of refreshed DRM graphics benchmarks on Linux 3.16 with Intel / Radeon / GeForce hardware.