The big set of kernel graphics driver features were merged today for the Linux 6.19 kernel. As usual there is a lot of new feature work on the AMD Radeon, Intel, and NVIDIA graphics drivers plus the smaller Arm/embedded graphics like now having initial Qualcomm Gen8 GPU support. Plus the growing number of accelerator "accel" drivers for NPUs / AI accelerators.

Some of the highlights of the new kernel graphics/display driver changes merged today for Linux 6.19 include:

- The [1]DRM Color Pipeline API support has been merged with initial usage by AMDGPU and VKMS drivers. This is another step forward for Linux HDR efforts. Via a secondary pull request the Intel driver support may land as well if Linus Torvalds doesn't object to the code being too fresh. Valve has invested heavily in this advanced color management support for the Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and benefiting Linux gaming at large.

- AMD GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands aging GPUs now [2]default to using the newer AMDGPU kernel driver rather than the legacy Radeon DRM driver. GCN 1.0/1.1 with AMDGPU has been experimental and opt-in until now with reaching feature parity to the Radeon driver. Using AMDGPU for these original Graphics Core Next (GCN) GPUs allow for better performance, RADV Vulkan driver support out-of-the-box, and other advantages thanks to the modern and better maintained driver codebase.

- Initial Intel [3]Xe3P support with enablement for Nova Lake integrated graphics as well as the [4]Crescent Island AI accelerator. With Linux 6.19 this is just the start of the Xe3P bring-up with much more code expected in future kernel cycles.

- The Intel driver is finally [5]supporting CASF adaptive sharpness found with Lunar Lake GPUs and newer. This CASF functionality has been a long-time coming and great to see it finally hit the mainline kernel.

- DRM Panic support for the Intel driver with that "Blue Screen of Death" like functionality.

- Continued efforts around Project Battlematrix for the Intel driver with peer-to-peer / multi-GPU improvements, continued SR-IOV work, etc.

- The open-source NVIDIA Nova driver has begun [6]making preparations toward future GPU support .

- [7]Nouveau support for larger pages and compression support .

- [8]Support for the new Qualcomm Adreno X2-85 GPU found with the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC . as well as the Adreno 840 Gen8 GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC.

- Over in the accelerator "accel" space of the DRM subsystem is the [9]Arm Ethos NPU driver . There is also Mesa Teflon support for the Ethos NPU as well.

- The AMDXDNA driver improves run-time power management, adds preemption support, and other improvements.

- The Intel IVPU accelerator driver added user pointer "userptr" support, user-managed preemption buffer, and other features.

- [10]Support for Arm Mali and Vivante graphics hardware in their respective drivers.

- Continued enablement work of Rust programming language support for Direct Rendering Manager drivers.

See [11]this Git merge for all the details on the exciting changes/features now in Linux 6.19 for these open-source GPU and accelerator drivers.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Color-Pipeline-API-Ready

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-AMDGPU-GCN-1.0-1.1

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Xe3P

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Crescent+Island

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Adaptive-Sharpness-6.19

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Boot42-Nova-Linux-6.19

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.19-Nouveau-Larger-Pages

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-X2-Elite-GPU-Linux-619

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arm-Ethos-NPU-For-Linux-6.19

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-619-DRM-Misc-Mali-Vivante

[11] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=6dfafbd0299a60bfb5d5e277fdf100037c7ded07