The big pull request was sent out today of the numerous Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) updates for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel. There are new drivers, a lot as usual for the AMD Radeon and Intel kernel graphics drivers, and a lot of other changes throughout for advancing these open-source kernel graphics/display drivers.
Some of the many highlights of the Linux 6.15 kernel graphics/display driver changes include:
- The NOVA core driver has been merged as the very initial start of this modern NVIDIA open-source kernel graphics driver. NOVA is being designed in the Rust programming language and makes use of the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) and firmware for easier enablement. But for Linux 6.15 it’s just the very early start in laying the foundation for the driver and getting something upstream so it will be easier to work out the Rust language abstractions and gradually build up this NOVA open-source NVIDIA driver over kernel cycles to come.
- A new “appletbdrm” driver for supporting the Apple Touch Bar displays on various MacBook laptops using the M1 and M2 SoCs.
- The Intel Xe driver now supports Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) as a very useful addition.
- The Intel Xe driver adds the “device wedged” event as a means of reporting when the GPU is hung for standardized reporting to user-space of hung GPUs. The AMDGPU driver also is supporting this device-wedged event in Linux 6.15.
- The Intel Xe driver also adds EU stall sampling support.
- The Intel Xe 3 dirty rect feature.
- A new “survivability mode” is introduced for the Intel Xe driver.
- Additional Intel device PCI IDs for upcoming Xe3 Panther Lake as well as for new Battlemage discrete graphics card variants.
- GPU and VRAM temperature reporting with the Xe driver for modern Arc Graphics hardware.
- The Intel driver now supports GuC SLPC power profile tuning for Meteor Lake and newer.
- Support for the OEM i2c interface for RGB lighting and other controls used by some AMD Radeon board partners.
- New AMD hardware for unspecified future graphics devices with additional RDNA 3.5 (GCC 1.5) refresh versions, DCN 3.6, and other new IP blocks added.
- AMD RDNA 3.5 cleaner shader support.
- AMD Radeon RX 9070 series fan speed reporting.
- Dynamic workload profile switching support for the AMDGPU driver with RDNA graphics hardware.
- The AMDKFD kernel compute driver preps for a new precision setting with upcoming Instinct MI350 hardware.
- The DRM Panic handler now is using FIDO 2.2 specification encoding for the QR coded error messages.
- New panel additions for the display found with the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6 Snapdragon and the Apple Summit display panel (Touch Bar).
- The Freedreno MSM DRM driver adds Adreno 623 GPU support.
- The Mediatek driver adds MT8365 SoC support.
- HDMI support for the Rockchip RK3576 SoC.
- The Qualcomm accelerator QAIC driver adds support for the new Cloud AI 200 AIC200 accelerator card.
- DRM Panic support for the VirtIO GPU driver.
The full list of feature patches on the DRM side for Linux 6.15 via this pull request. Intel and AMD graphics driver benchmarks of their upstream Linux 6.15 drivers to come following the closure of the v6.15 merge window after next week.