Linux 5.9 Gets More Fixes For AMD RDNA2 GPUs, Promotes Navi 12

A batch of fixes to the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver were sent in today for Linux 5.9. While AMDGPU fixes this late in the kernel cycle tend to not be too notable, this time around there are some prominent items worth covering.

When it comes to the next-generation "Sienna Cichlid" and "Navy Flounder" Navi 2x graphics (RDNA2) support, there are continued updates in making the support in good shape for Linux 5.9 stable. This work includes additional Sienna Cichlid PCI IDs being added, fixing for building DCN 3.0 code with older versions of GCC, temporarily disabling GFXOFF capabilities for Navy Flounder until issues are resolved, and the kernel side bits for AV1 decode with these GPUs.

The Sienna Cichlid IDs being added as part of this pull is 0x73A0, 0x73A2, 0x73A3, 0x73AB, 0x73AE, and 0x73BF.

Aside from the RDNA2 graphics updates squeezed into Linux 5.9, this round of "fixes" also promotes Navi 12 support from being treated as experimental. The Navi 12 support is no longer hidden behind a module parameter to enable the support at boot but with moving out of the experimental phase is enabled by default. Navi 12 is found in the Radeon Pro 5600M and the commit promoting it out of the experimental state notes, "Navi12 has worked fine for a while now."

All of these changes plus fixes for Renoir and Raven, HDCP protection, and other code fixes are on their way for hitting Linux 5.9 mainline this week ahead of the Linux 5.9-rc8 release while more than likely Linux 5.9 stable will come out on 11 October. With the RDNA2 event not until 28 October, this does give time for rolling-release distributions to pick up the new kernel and the latest Mesa code while more than likely any early RDNA2 graphics card owners will want to be riding Linux Git and Mesa Git for the best performance and features (or be running the packaged Radeon Software for Linux driver on supported distributions).