• X.Org Server 21.1 RC1 Released With VRR Support For Modesetting Driver, Other Features - Phoronix

  More than three years after X.Org Server 1.20 was released, it's set to finally be succeeded soon by X.Org Server 21.1 under its new versioning scheme. Out today is the X.org Server 21.1 release candidate.

  X.Org Server 21.1 is finally coming to light after being organized by new X.Org Server release manager volunteer Povilas Kanapickas. Even this new 21.1 release planning is running a few weeks late due to lingering changes to be moved. Rather than RC1 at the end of August, it's now coming at the end of September, but in any case it's looking like the official xorg-server 21.1.0 release will be out this year.

• xorg-server 21.0.99.901

  This is the first release candidate of Xorg 21.1.0 release.

• AMDGPU Linux Driver To Overhaul Its Approach To Device Enumeration - Phoronix

  AMD's open-source Linux graphics driver engineers are working to overhaul how the initial driver loading with device enumeration happens to ultimately make it more robust. In the process though PCI IDs become less important and in turn less of an avenue for exposing possible indicators of new graphics cards.

  A set of 66 patches were sent out today that alter more than two thousand lines of code. The change is ultimately more about having the device enumeration and discovery of supported IP/hardware blocks rather than being tied explicitly to PCI device IDs. All recent AMD GPUs do contain an "IP discovery table" for noting the different graphics, video encode/decode, and other blocks on the hardware -- the AMDGPU kernel driver would basically use that for determining its code paths and what is supported, etc.

• Peter Hutterer: An Xorg release without Xwayland

  And it's a release without Xwayland.

  And... wait, what?

  Let's unwind this a bit, and ideally you should come away with a better understanding of Xorg vs Xwayland, and possibly even Wayland itself.
  Heads up: if you are familiar with X, the below is simplified to the point it hurts. Sorry about that, but as an X developer you're probably good at coping with pain.

  Let's go back to the 1980s, when fashion was weird and there were still reasons to be optimistic about the future. Because this is a thought exercise, we go back with full hindsight 20/20 vision and, ideally, the winning Lotto numbers in case we have some time for some self-indulgence.

Cycles X as a modernizing of Blender's Cycles rendering engine has now landed in the latest development code for Blender 3.0. Cycles X brings big performance improvements but does eliminate OpenCL support in the process.

Cycles X was one of the reasons for the delay in the Blender 3.0 release to allow time for this Cycles overhaul to land. As of yesterday, the Cycles-X branch was merged into the Blender 3.0 code-base as a major renderer update.

• Mike Blumenkrantz: Underwater

  I got a request recently to fix up the WebGL Aquarium demo. I’ve had this bookmarked for a while since it’s one of the only test cases for GL_EXT_multisampled_render_to_texture I’m aware of, at least when running Chrome in EGL mode.

  Naturally, I decided to do both at once since this would be yet another extension that no native desktop driver in Mesa currently supports.

• xf86-input-libinput 1.2.0

  This release introduces support for touchpad gestures that will
  be available as part of X server 21.1. Additionally high-resolution
  scrolling data is now acquired from libinput if available and sent
  downstream to X server. The default scroll distance has been bumped
  to 120 in the process, but this should not affect correctly written
  clients.

• xf86-input-libinput 1.2 Brings Touchpad Gestures, High Resolution Scrolling - Phoronix

  For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, xf86-input-libinput 1.2 is now available for integrating the latest functionality of libinput input handling library.

  Libinput 1.19 released last week with support for hold gesture types and high resolution wheel scrolling. The xf86-input-libinput 1.2 release for this X.Org DDX now supports touchpad gestures and high resolution scrolling data as well when pairing this driver with libinput 1.19. In the case of the hold gestures, it requires to be used in conjunction with the forthcoming X.Org Server 21.1 release.

• NVIDIA Prepares The Linux Kernel For Future Laptops With EC-Driven Backlights - Phoronix

  NVIDIA is contributing a new open-source driver to the upstream Linux kernel for dealing with upcoming laptops where the backlight controls are handled by the device's embedded controller (EC).

  With Linux 5.16 later this year NVIDIA is ready with the "wmaa-backlight-wmi" driver for EC-based backlight controls for upcoming laptop/notebook computers.

• AMD Continues CRIU Work To Checkpoint/Restore ROCm Compute Workloads - Phoronix

  Earlier this year AMD went public with prototyping CRIU support for Radeon GPUs around ROCm to be able to checkpoint/freeze running compute workloads and to then restore them at a later point. This CRIU focus is driven by their big accelerator needs and forthcoming supercomputers for migrating workloads particularly within containers. AMD continues working on CRIU support for GPUs and last week provided an update on the project.

• AMD + Valve Focusing On P-State / CPPC Driver With Schedutil For Better Linux Efficiency - Phoronix

  As reported at the start of August, AMD and Valve have been working on Linux CPU performance/frequency scaling improvements with the Steam Deck being one of the leading motivators. As speculated at that time, their work would likely revolve around use of ACPI CPPC found with Zen 2 CPUs and newer. Published last week was that AMD P-State driver for Linux systems indeed now leveraging CPPC information. AMD formally presented this new driver yesterday at XDC2021.

• DRM Driver Posted For AI Processing Unit - Initially Focused On Mediatek SoCs - Phoronix

  BayLibre developer Alexandre Bailon has posted a "request for comments" of a new open-source Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver for AI Processing Unit (APU) functionality. Initially the driver is catering to Mediatek SoCs with an AI co-processor but this DRM "APU" driver could be adapted to other hardware too.

  Alexandre Bailon sums up this DRM AI Processing Unit driver as "a DRM driver that implements communication between the CPU and an APU. This uses VirtIO buffer to exchange messages. For the data, we allocate a GEM object and map it using IOMMU to make it available to the APU. The driver is relatively generic, and should work with any SoC implementing hardware accelerator for AI if they use support remoteproc and VirtIO."

• Apple M1 USB Type-C Linux Support Code Sent Out For Testing - Phoronix

  he latest patches sent out for review/testing on the long mission for enabling Apple M1 support on Linux is the USB Type-C connectivity.

  Sven Peter has sent out the initial USB Type-C enablement work for the Apple ACE1/2 chips used by Apple M1 systems. In turn this Apple design is based on the TI TPS6598x IP but various differences. The Linux kernel support is being added onto the existing TIPD driver.