AMDGPU DRM Driver Updates To Work With Production Polaris GPUs

It looks like some last-minute changes to the Linux kernel are needed for prepping the AMDGPU DRM driver to handle the production Radeon RX 400 "Polaris" graphics cards that will soon be shipping.

This is the first generation of Radeon hardware where open-source support has been worked on publicly prior to launch. With Polaris the initial kernel-side code is coming in Linux 4.7 as the first kernel with the big changes needed to the kernel driver. In user-space you'll need Mesa 12.0+.

While the code has already been mainlined in Linux 4.7, it looks like some changes are needed to this code for supporting the production Polaris GPUs. Alex Deucher of AMD today mailed out "Polaris updates for production silicon" that contain 444 lines of new code and 139 lines of deleted code.

These 12 patches to make the open-source driver work with the Radeon RX 460/470/480 hardware that will begin shipping in the weeks ahead contain fixes to the PolwerPlay code mostly but also some atomBIOS changes, updated golden settings, enabling the clock stretch functionality, and other adjustments. The patches were published this morning on the amd-gfx mailing list.

Since they're all fixes and Polaris hardware isn't even public yet, hopefully this work will all land in Linux 4.7 quite soon. Stay tuned for Polaris Linux benchmarks on Phoronix on launch day.