Linux 2.6.33-rc1 Kernel Released

[trapDoor]

Nope. Once the microcode is loaded into the GPU the chip doesn't care where it came from. AFAIK the loading only happens once, during system startup.

I see. That makes perfect sense. Thanks for clarifying.

I'm not sure of the exact path from source tree to your distro or system, but it should come down the same way as the firmware for network hardware and disk controllers. Whatever that is

I'm only concerned about the original kernel source packages I get from http://www.kernel.org/. For example if I look directly into linux-2.6.33-rc1.tar.bz2 I can see radeon firmware files included in firmware/radeon:
..../media/lamus/kernel/original/2.6.33-rc1/linux-2.6.33-rc1$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 R100_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 R200_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 R300_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 R420_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 R520_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 59148 2009-12-18 01:14 R600_me.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 6348 2009-12-18 01:14 R600_pfp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 RS600_cp.bin.ihex
-rw-r--r-- 1 [...] 5684 2009-12-18 01:14 RS690_cp.bin.ihex
....

So I guess if R6xx_rlc.bin are going to be included in future kernels they should end up there as well.