DragonFlyBSD Picks Up Radeon Performance Improvements With Latest Code Update

Slipping just past this week's DragonFlyBSD 5.6 release is now an early feature for the next series: continued work on the Radeon DRM driver ported to this BSD from the Linux kernel.

The Radeon DRM driver and TTM memory management code in DragonFlyBSD has now been re-based to the state from the upstream Linux 3.19.8 kernel. Yes, it's still a long ways out-of-date with the upstream Linux 5.2 kernel releasing in the weeks ahead, but it's an improvement nevertheless in the slow trot the BSDs face in making use of the Linux Direct Rendering Manager drivers.

With this update to the Radeon driver in DragonFlyBSD, there are various bug fixes as well as fan control improvements for GCN 1.0/1.1 graphics cards, and even some performance improvements. The better performance comes thanks to memory management improvements.