DRM Changes For Linux 4.7 Bring Four New ARM Drivers, AMD Polaris Support

The DRM subsystem updates have been submitted for the Linux 4.7 kernel. This is a big pull with more than 80,000 lines of new code for the mainline kernel!

If you have been a devout Phoronix follower with reading our many Linux hardware articles, particularly about graphics, you should already be well familiar with the Direct Rendering Manager changes for Linux 4.7. These changes include:

- The open-source AMD improvements this round being initial support for upcoming Polaris (Radeon Rx 400 series). There are also GPUVM / scheduler / clock / PowerPlay improvements, async page-flipping support, and more. For AMDGPU users, there are some performance improvements. This 4.7 kernel isn't bringing the newly-published OverDrive or GCN 1.0 experimental AMDGPU support, which will be held off until Linux 4.8. It also doesn't contain the complete DAL code-base as the big display code for AMDGPU.

- New DRM drivers for the HiSilicon Kirin, Mediatek MT8173, ARC PGU, and Allwinner A13.

- The Intel DRM driver brings color manager support, more atomic code work, VBT refactoring, DSI support on Broxton, GEM improvements, GuC firmware work, DisplayPort fixes, and more.

- The belated Nouveau code has GM108 Maxwell support, power sensor improvements, fixes, and other changes. Sadly though no Boost support or other performance/re-clocking enhancements. There also isn't any Pascal GTX 1080/1070 support yet.

- The Raspberry Pi VC4 driver has render node and gamma ramp support along with DPI panel support.

- Some other changes include host messaging support in the VMWGFX driver, Exynos 4533 SoC support, render-node support, and various other changes to the smaller DRM drivers.

This DRM PR is huge with adding 103,237 lines of new code while removing 20,950 lines of code. The ~80k lines of new code primarily from the four new DRM drivers and most notably from the AMDGPU additions for Polaris, etc.