AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile Series "Renoir" Graphics No Longer Experimental With Linux 5.5

While the Linux 5.5 kernel is expected to be released as soon as this Sunday, a last minute change to the AMDGPU DRM driver makes the Renoir graphics no longer treated as experimental. With that, there is open-source support out-of-the-box rather than being hidden behind a kernel module flag.

AMD has been working on the Renoir support for Linux going back to the end of last summer. Renoir was sent in for the Linux 5.4 kernel but initially treated as "experimental" support while now at the end of the Linux 5.5 cycle it's no longer treated as experimental.

This is good due to the first batch of Renoir parts being announced back at CES earlier this month. The Ryzen 4000 mobile series is Renoir from the low-end Ryzen 4300U through the top-end Ryzen 4800H and 4800U models. Renoir is based on the Zen 2 CPU cores with a revised Vega GPU.

As Renoir is Vega-based, the enablement from the graphics driver side wasn't too big and at least is now promoted out of experimental so those running the upcoming Linux 5.5 kernel (which should be on the likes of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) will find the support enabled by default. When AMD Radeon graphics are behind the experimental flag, it requires booting the kernel with amdgpu.exp_hw_support=1 to enable the non-production-ready support. So this kernel should be out and adopted before seeing more Renoir laptops hitting the market.

The promotion was the only change as part of the amd-drm-fixes sent in today for 5.5.