AMD FreeSync support is coming to Linux

AMD FreeSync support is coming to Linux

 

AMD FreeSync support will be coming to both their Linux open and closed source drivers in the future, with plans to continue to improve both their stability and performance on Linux in the future. 

FreeSync is designed to reduce tearing and to increase battery life by dynamically adapting the display refresh rate with the GPUs outputted refresh rate. With more and more FreeSync compatible displays coming to the market it is great to see that Linux will also be gaining support for the new display standard. 

 

    

 

With their future drivers AMD plans on providing users with better multi-display support and improving the power savings when GPUs are at an idle state. Hopefully some of these changes will also help AMD’s performance in Linux, especially since we are seeing Steam Machines coming to market. 

 

      The goal with DAL is to provide a unified, full featured display stack to service all of our Linux offerings. This driver will have to support our full feature set beyond what’s supported by amdgpu, e.g. 

– synchronzied timings across different displays 
– freesync 
– solid support of 6 displays in any configuration (HDMI, DVI, DP, DP MST, etc) 
– solid support of 4k at 60 timings on APUs 
– power features, such as 
– clock-accurate bandwidth formulas 
– improved interaction with powerplay to maximize power savings 
– Improved audio and other infoframe related features 
– Improved stability with powerplay since display hw is involved in the SMC hw interactions and improper programming sequences can lead to GPU hangs, etc. 

The current amdgpu display stack grew somewhat organically and as such is not well suited to handling all of the hardware dependencies involved especially in areas like audio. The drm abstractions used by the old code map less and less well to new hw pipelines. Atomic helps, but if we are going to convert, it seemed like a good time to start fresh.

 

With the Vulkan API having just been released and Linux gaming continuing to grow in popularity it makes sense for AMD to improve their driver support on the platform, especially when major features like FreeSync support are currently missing. 

 

You can join the discussion on AMD FreeSync support coming to AMD’s Linux Drivers on the OC3D Forums.