Timur Kristóf, one of Valve's subcontractors, has presented plans to improve support for AMD graphics cards of the GCN 1.0 "Southern Island" and 1.1 "Sea Islands" families in Linux. Last year, the AMDGPU driver reached parity with the Radeon driver for the GCN 1.x series of graphics cards and was enabled by default in the Linux kernel 6.19 codebase, slated for release in February. The GCN 1.x cards were produced from 2012 to 2019 and include models such as Radeon HD 77xx/78xx/79xx/87xx/88xx/89xx, Radeon R9 280, FirePro W4000-W9000, Radeon Sky 700/900, Radeon R9 265/270/370, Radeon R9 290/390, HD 7790/8870, and other Radeon Rx 200/Rx 300 series graphics cards.
Among the plans for further development of GCN 1.x support in Linux, some will also be beneficial for other GPUs, such as the Polaris family.
- Implementation of format modifiers (DRM format modifier) support for the SI, CIK, VI, and Polaris GPU series, which will enable the use of Vulkan-based composite managers, the OpenGL driver Zink, and some other components.
- Adding support for display bridge controllers TRAVIS and NUTMEG, allowing AMDGPU to be used by default in configurations with APU of the CIK family.
- Refactoring power management. Older GPUs use separate power management code, "DPM," which differs from the main AMDGPU code. Unifying the code for older GPUs with the rest will eliminate a separate branch for these GPUs, reduce code size, and simplify driver maintenance.
- Considering the improvements in GCN 1.x support in the DC (Display Core) code, such as the ability to use analog video outputs, it makes sense to remove the old code for these GPUs that does not utilize DC, which will simplify driver maintenance and reduce code size.
- Fixing remaining bugs, such as the incorrect power limit for the Radeon 430 GPU, black screen on analog connectors of the Radeon HD 7790, and page faults on GPUs of the SI/CIK families.
- Support for partially resident textures (PRT). A patch for the Linux kernel has already been prepared, along with a request for changes for MESA to enable this feature.
- Support for the transfer queue in the RADV driver for older GPUs.
Source: opennet.ru
