Initial AMDGPU Features Lining Up For The Linux 4.6 Kernel

AMD's Alex Deucher has sent in the initial updates of the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers for DRM-Next that in turn will target the upcoming Linux 4.6 kernel cycle.

Changes with this latest pull request include ACP (Audio Co-Processor) support for APUs with i2s audio, CS ioctl optimizations, GPU scheduler optimizations, GPUVM optimizations, initial GPU reset support, a new PowerPlay sysfs interface for manually selecting clock speeds, various PowerPlay fixes, virtualization fixes, removal of hardware semaphores support, and other clean-ups and fixes.

So it's not too exciting on the feature front unless you have a new Carrizo APU with i2s audio, but there are a lot of AMDGPU optimizations along with PowerPlay fixes for the AMDGPU re-clocking situation. The GPU reset support for being able to reset a hung GPU isn't yet enabled by default. As with the recent trend, most of these new open-source AMD developments are around the AMDGPU driver for GCN 1.2 GPus and newer while the Radeon DRM driver is getting into quite a mature state for all other AMD GPUs.

More details via this DRI-devel pull request.