Linux 4.11 To Enable Frame-Buffer Compression By Default For Skylake+

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 4.11 To Enable Frame-Buffer Compression By Default For Skylake+

Skylake and newer hardware is set to have frame-buffer compression (FBC) enabled by default when the Linux 4.11 kernel rolls around in a few months. This feature can reduce power consumption while reducing memory bandwidth needed for screen refreshes...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.11-FBC-Skylake+

[tildearrow]

Michael I am unable to see this article...

Edit: This link seems to work: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...FBC-Skylake%2B

[slacka]

Two years ago, this feature was supposed to work on Intel's first generation HD(gen5), "Ironlake" hardware and newer. Now they're only announcing support for the fifth generation HD(gen9) that most people don't even own yet and won't be common for a long time. Is there any chance that Intel or the community will enable this on older HD hardware? Or is there some hardware issue preventing it from working on older GPUs?

[calc]

I wonder if this is disabled on Windows too or if its just a lack of allocated resources at Intel to fix the problems in the Linux driver allowing it to be enabled.

[Obstbraten]

With FBC I have more GPU usage (shown in intel_gpu_top).

[HyperDrive]

Two years ago, this feature was supposed to work on Intel's first generation HD(gen5), "Ironlake" hardware and newer.

Two years ago? Heh. I distinctly remember my Eee PC 901 having framebuffer compression, and that's gen3 (i945GME). We're talking about a chipset from January 2006.

[FLHerne]

You can force-enable it on older GPUs with:

`options i915 enable_fbc=1` in modprobe.d. It works alright on my Sandy Bridge laptop; on Ironlake it used to cause nasty bugs or hang the GPU frequently.

[seandarcy]

How do you force-enable with modesetting ?