NVIDIA Tegra DRM Driver Supports Atomic Mode-Setting In Linux 3.20

The latest work landing in the DRM-Next code-base for the Linux 3.20 kernel merge window is the Tegra DRM driver updates.

The Tegra DRM driver is primarily designed to support the Tegra 4 and older SoCs while the Tegra K1 and newer is supported by the Nouveau DRM driver due to the graphics core now being common with their mainline desktop architecture. The Tegra K1's GK20A graphics core is derived directly from Kepler while the brand new Tegra X1 is derived from Maxwell. Clarification: The Tegra DRM driver is still used by modern Tegra SoCs just for the display portion while the GPU rendering block uses the Nouveau DRM.

The biggest change to the Tegra DRM driver for the Linux 3.20 merge window is support for atomic mode-setting. Atomic mode-setting has been a longtime work-in-progress while finally in recent kernels it's materializing. The most important aspect of atomic mode-setting to users is that it allows testing proposed mode-setting to ensure it's fully supported by the hardware when it comes to the hardware requirements, etc, before actually being committed.

The Tegra DRM update for Linux 3.20 also has "minimal" power management support, the host1x code now supports suspend/resume for child devices, and various other changes. The newest Tegra DRM code was pulled a short time ago into DRM-Next via this Git pull.