Sent out last week was one final batch of drm-misc-next updates ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel cycle. Besides a couple fixes, most notable was new async flipping code for the Intel DRM driver with the IN_FORMATS_ASYNC DRM property.

Landing for Linux 6.16 is the "IN_FORMATS_ASYNC" DRM plane property. IN_FORMATS_ASYNC is to be used initially by just the Intel driver for buffer format and modifier pairs supported by a given plan for asynchronous flips. The patch series for exposing the modifiers/formats supported by async flips further notes:

"All of the formats/modifiers supported by the plane during synchronous flips are nor supported by asynchronous flips. The formats/modifiers exposed to user by IN_FORMATS exposes all formats/modifiers supported by plane and this list varies for async flips. If the async flip supported formats/modifiers are exposed to the user, user based on this list can take decision to proceed or not and avoid flip failures during async flips."

Waiting in user-space is already [1]this open GNOME Mutter merge request from seven months ago for supporting the tearing modifiers DRM property. In turn that should help address [2]this merge request for supporting async page flipping or tearing under GNOME.

The IN_FORMATS_ASYNC addition is the main focal point of last week's [3]drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 6.16 cycle.



[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/4063

[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3797

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/23ded62c-6a62-4195-9c08-4dfb81eafd72@linux.intel.com/