AMD Releases Open-Source Driver Support For Next-Gen Polaris GPUs (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: For the first time ever, AMD has provided open-source support for next-generation discrete GPUs ahead of the product's launch. AMD developers published initial open-source Linux driver support for Polaris GPUs with the addition adding over sixty-seven thousand lines of code to the Linux kernel. AMD Polaris graphics cards are expected this summer while AMD released the open-source driver support in advance for preparing their new Linux hybrid driver that relies upon the open-source AMDGPU kernel driver.

Comments

Re:Why add this to the kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how. Adding a driver to the kernel means adding the source code to Linux's source tree, not adding it to the kernel image, typically resulting in whoever builds the kernel gaining the choice of having the driver be omitted, built as a loadable kernel module, or statically linked directly into the main kernel image.

Most drivers added to the kernel are either disabled or set to compile as loadable kernel modules by default, and there's no reason to believe that this will be an exception.

won't be in the mainline kernel until at least 4.7

[Gravis Zero]

well in the past couple weeks, AMD has dropped a whopping 150k lines of code to add to the kernel. the reason it's so obscenely large is it includes duplicate functionality that is already in the kernel and a lot of abstractions. therefore, the code is being worked on to rip out the redundant crap and actually use existing kernel functionality before it's accepted and thusly not making it into 4.6. after it's whittled down to just the code that's actually needed, it can be added to the kernel.