Etnaviv Now Making Use Of AMDGPU DRM Scheduler, GC7000L Support Coming For Linux 4.18

The open-source driver developers responsible for the reverse-engineered, open-source Vivante GC graphics driver "Etnaviv" have sent in the pull request of their updates for DRM-Next that is of material to be found in the upcoming Linux 4.17 development cycle.

The most notable addition to the Etnaviv Direct Rendering Manager driver for Linux 4.17 is that it's now wired into the DRM GPU scheduler, or rather it's the AMDGPU scheduler that was punted into the common DRM space. It will be interesting to see the impact of Etnaviv now making use of AMD's optimized GPU scheduler.

The Etnaviv DRM driver also has prep work for supporting the latest-generation GC7000L hardware. The GC7000L support is important since that is what's used by the NXP i.MX8 SoC that will be used by the Purism Librem 5 smartphone and other devices. But the actual GC7000L support in Etnaviv isn't expected until the Linux 4.18 kernel cycle.

The good news is that while the code hasn't yet landed, they have open-source 3D already running on the i.MX8M / GC7000 hardware.

The complete list of Etnaviv DRM changes for Linux 4.17 can be found via this pull request.