AMD "DAL" Being Renamed To "DC"

AMD's big display abstraction layer (DAL) code-base that's used by AMDGPU-PRO but not yet mainlined in the Linux kernel for providing HDMI 2.0, future FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync, HDMI/DP audio, and other modern display features is DAL no more.

When DAL was presented earlier this year it was a monstrous code-base as it's long been the display code used by their Windows and Linux proprietary drivers and was initially filled with lots of abstractions to fit into the DRM space. Over the past several months AMD developers have been working to significant slim down DAL and make it designed for the Linux kernel, in what is basically "DAL 3.0", according to past presentations. For those new to reading Phoronix or don't recall our dozens of articles on the topic, there is the DAL presentation from XDC2016 to provide more background information.

AMD has been working hard to get DAL ready for the mainline Linux kernel since they plan to use it for upcoming hardware releases and don't want to continue implementing a non-DAL code-path. In November we saw a lot of new DAL code published and it looks like that will continue until they are ready to merge the code, likely for Linux 4.11.

The latest is that DAL is being renamed. With this patch DAL directories are being renamed to display while the rest of the patches are renaming "DAL" to "DC".