OpenChrome Still Aspiring For Open-Source VIA Graphics, But Not Going Mainline This Year
While it has been over a decade since VIA x86 graphics were remotely common, Brace continues working on the OpenChrome DRM driver as a learning instrument and a passion for old hardware -- he also has contributed maintenance patches to SiS, S3 Graphics, and other DDX drivers left unmaintained.
His XDC2019 update on OpenChrome comes down to hoping to release xf86-video-openchrome 0.7 eventually (it's been talked about for nearly two years at least), the OpenChrome kernel mode-setting code has essentially achieved parity with the user-space mode-setting code recently in the DDX driver, and there is now legacy universal plane support in the KMS code.
The main blocker though for getting the OpenChrome DRM/KMS driver into the mainline tree is needing to support the KMS "atomic" interfaces. That's been a requirement now for a while for all new DRM/KMS drivers and due to the work involved plus still working on other driver fixes has meant that it's been very slow to materialize for this open-source VIA driver. As such, OpenChrome won't be part of the Linux 5.5 merge window to end out 2019 and will still likely be a ways out from seeing mainline.
He does have hopes for in the future being able to accomplish command submission based 2D/EXA acceleration, double buffering support, and potentially even video and 3D acceleration but that would be quite a tall order.
More details on the 2019 state of OpenChrome via the slide deck (PDF).
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