AMDGPU Patches For Virtual Display Feature

Written by Michael Larabel in Radeon on 4 August 2016 at 12:59 PM EDT. 8 Comments
RADEON
The latest open-source AMDGPU DRM patches posted by AMD developers is for providing virtual display functionality.

Thirteen patches posted today add virtual display functionality to the kernel driver. This feature allows other kernel modules and user-space components to work off a fake display engine without even realizing it's a virtual display.

The contents of the virtual display can be accessed through remote desktop tools, etc. The use-case for this virtual display support are for headless GPUs, pre-silicon hardware bring-up testing, GPUs/accelerators with disabled display outputs (such as some workstation cards), and other cases where a virtual display may be desired without sending the rendered screen off to a physical device.

More details via the patch series. Alex Deucher also commented that this virtual display support makes it look like a regular KMS CRTC/encoder/connector and will work fine with all user-space components unchanged -- i.e. desktops, xrandr, and related utilities really don't know they are running on a virtual display.
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