drm changes and updating to 12.0

[Johannes Lundberg]

On Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 5:27 PM Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com> wrote:

>
> Warner Losh writes:
>
> >      I'm curious where 2013 comes from. I know that Intel Sandy Bridge
> graphics
> >      is supported with VAAPI acceleration by drm-stable-kmod, since it i
> working
> >      on the system I am using to send this message. I bought it in 2011,
> the
> >      year Sandy Bridge was introduced to production products.
> >
> >  2013 is "five year old hardware or newer". It's a number I pulled out
> of the
> >  air when trying to nail down the group in describing who should use
> what.
> >  Giving code names would also work. Sandy Bridge and newer, though, is
> confusing
> >  to people.  I'd use 2011 as the release date for Sandy Bridge, but then
> what
> >  about the AMD other GPUs?
> >
> >  If there's a better way to message what's supported, I'm all ears.
>
>         Lacking a better plan: is there a list of which card/gpu is
> currently known to work with which drm(-kmod) version, perhaps
> gathered from those involved with development?  (Is this based on work
> from Linux? If so, do they have a list?)
>

Hi

Updating the wiki graphics pages is long overdue and we hope to have it
refreshed before the 12.0 release. Everything will be explained there in
detail together with some compatibility matrix.
This has probably been said many times on the mailing list but I feel
obligated to try to inform the best I can until we have updated the wiki.

The short version is that drm2 in base (/sys/dev/drm2/) have support for hw
up to 2013 (maybe 2014), that's why drm-legacy-kmod is said to support hw
up to that year.

Now, the linuxkpi based ones, drm-stable-kmod and drm-devel-kmod (I'm not
including drm-next-kmod because that will go away), potentially could work
on hw older than 2013. Initially they didn't but they have been patched to
potentially work on same hw as base drm2 but this is barely tested yet.

Recently, drm-devel-kmod was patched to work on i386 but this is also not
fully tested yet. So, theoretically, if you're running current,
drm-devel-kmod could run your 10 years old 32 bit computer's gpu but it's
too early to make any guarantees. Please feel free to test.

Usually the meta-port, drm-kmod, will choose the best (safest bet) for your
system.

Which Linux version is tracked is listed in the port info.
drm-stable-kmod is currently at Linux 4.9
drm-devel-kmod is currently at Linux 4.16

The best way is lookup what is supported by the Linux version (if anyone
know a good site, please share the link). If the hw is supported there, and
it's driven by i915, amdgpu or radeon, it should work on FreeBSD as well.

If you have any of the _really_ old cards supported by drm1 (what's in
/sys/dev/drm/), you'll always need drm-legacy-kmod.

We know this transition has been messy and confusing but we're working hard
to improve this.

/Johannes


>
>
>                         Respectfully,
>
>
>                                 Robert Huff
>
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