DRM Format Modifiers For Old AMD GPUs Coming With Linux 7.3: Thanks Valve

Sent out today was another week's worth of features and other code changes to the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver. We are nearing the cut-off of new feature material for next month's Linux 7.3 kernel but there is some nice feature work in store for this week.

For those on an older AMD Radeon GPU with GFX6 through GFX8 era IP, which equates to the original Radeon HD 7000 series "GCN 1.0" graphics cards up through the Polaris and FIji based graphics cards, there is now DRM format modifier support for these old GPUs. This is another improvement for old AMD Radeon graphics processors by Timur Kristóf of Valve's open-source Linux graphics driver team.

DRM format modifiers provide details on tiling, compression, and other attributes for image buffers. Depending upon the layout it can also help with better performance and other more versatile use-cases. DRM format modifiers support can allow Vulkan-powered Wayland compositors, compositors running on the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan layer, interoperability between different graphics APIs, and more.

That GFX6 through GFX9 modifiers support is one of the interesting changes in this week's AMDGPU/AMDKFD pull. Also notable is the Apple Studio Display fixes.

There is also a GEM close optimization, DCN 4.2 display core IP updates, and removing old BUG() calls.

There are also many bug fixes for both the AMDGPU and AMDKFD drivers. The full list of these changes queuing up for Linux 7.3 can be found via this pull request.