Radeon Linux 5.6 Changes Begin Queuing - Better Power Management, Adds DMCUB Controller

While the Linux 5.5 merge window has just been over for less than one week, AMD has already submitted their first batch of feature updates to DRM-Next of new graphics driver material aiming for Linux 5.6 early next year.

With just a few weeks of feature work being merged so far and still several more weeks to go before the DRM-Next cut-off ahead of the Linux 5.5 kernel release around late January, still a lot more work is expected this cycle. But already for the AMDGPU graphics driver in Linux 5.6 on the table is:

- Support for DMCUB as a new display micro-controller coming with Renoir.

- DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (DP MST) atomic routines.

- The DC "Display Core" code now has OEM i2c support, Renoir fixes, HDCP 2.x support, and other display improvements.

- Fixes for Navi/GFX10 along with updated golden register settings.

- Reworked JPEG engine handling for Video Core Next (VCN) along with clock/power gating support for JPEG.

- Support for power metrics on Renoir.

- BACO (Bus Active, Chip Off) support for the Arcturus GPU.

- BACO is now used by supported GPUs for run-time power management for conserving power where as previously on Linux AMD BACO was just used for GPU resets in case of hangs. Meanwhile Navi 10 has picked up "GFXOFF" support for being able to turn off the graphics engine when not in use.

- SR-IOV and RAS fixes.

The complete list of changes to begin the AMDGPU Linux 5.6 queue can be found via this mailing list post.