Mesa 21.0 RadeonSI Merges Buffer Modifier Support

The long-standing patches by Bas Nieuwenhuizen on implementing DMA-BUF modifier support for the RadeonSI code within Mesa has now been merged for next quarter's Mesa 21.0 feature release.

With Linux 5.11 bringing the buffer modifier support on the kernel side for GFX9/Vega and newer, the code merged today into Mesa 21.0 enables the user-space API and makes use of the modifier capabilities within RadeonSI Gallium3D for the recent AMD Radeon graphics cards. This follows Intel's Linux graphics stack that has benefited from modifier support for a while.

The modifiers support is for being able to describe modifications to a buffer's layout and support additional tiling formats. The modifier support can be useful for functionality like end-to-end compression and other performance-minded characteristics. Collabora did a lot of the infrastructure work on the modifers support years ago and can be found outlined in part via this blog post.

Now as we roll into 2021, the AMDGPU graphics stack with Linux 5.11 and Mesa 21.0 has buffer modifier support seemingly ready for Vega and newer.

This interesting AMDGPU Radeon modifier work is now merged.