Initial Intel Broxton Support Might Come To Linux 4.1

Daniel Vetter of Intel today sent in more code for DRM-Next that in turn will be merged for the Linux 4.1 kernel. It was also signaled that the initial hardware enablement of the graphics processor on Intel's upcoming "Broxton" SoC might happen for this next version of the Linux kernel.

The drm-intel-next changes submitted today were some DP link rate refactoring, RPS tuning for Bay Trail and Braswell, more PPGTT PTE work, Valley View DPLL code refactoring, rotated GGTT view support, and other code cleaning. These changes are on top of the Intel DRM changes already queued up for Linux 4.1.

In Vetter's mailing list message today he also indicated, "Final i915 pull for 4.1, except maybe I'll throw in a bxt stage1 enabling patch if it's ready in time - all the core changes have landed already so impact would be minimal, as usual."

BXT? It's short for Broxton, a new Atom SoC design talked about for years. It looks like Intel Broxton is finally premiering this year for powering new ultra-portable devices like high-end tablets and smart-phones. Broxton is based on Intel's Goldmont architecture and is expected to offer a number of new abilities that should be appealing for the manufacturers going with products based on this new SoC design.

In the past few days there's been various Linux kernel "BXT" patches floating around so it looks like the initial support might pan out for Linux 4.1 although as usual it will likely take a few kernel release cycles until Broxton's Linux support is full-featured from the graphics to other areas of this system-on-a-chip.