AMD Radeon KMS driver committed to 10-CURRENT

[Jean-Sébastien Pédron]

Hello,

The AMD Radeon KMS driver is now in HEAD, as of r254885. It's available
for amd64 and i386. The code is based on Linux 3.8. Supported hardware
should be up-to and including Radeon HD 7xxx (Southern Islands series).

The driver comes with :
    o  "radeonkms", the main kernel module
    o  a boat load of binary-only firmwares, installed as kernel
       modules prefixed with "radeonkmsfw_"

To use it, you'll need ports that are not yet in the ports tree. You can
find instructions on how to get them on the wiki:
  https://wiki.freebsd.org/AMD_GPU#How_to_test

Here are the major known issues of the driver:

    1. Like with i915kms, the console is unusable once the kernel
       module is loaded (blank screen). This prevents a user from using
       Ctrl-Alt-Fx from an X session, and ending its session will let
       the computer in an unusable state. The module can be unloaded
       but it won't restore the console. However, the computer can be
       used remotely.
       This problem is being worked on. And remember that you don't
       need to load the kernel module at boot time or manually: it'll
       be done automatically during X startup.

    2. Suspend/resume was not tested so far.

    3. Features such as GPGPU (using the GPU for general computations),
       power management (reclocking) or hardware-assisted video
       decoding are not supported. They depend on a newer kernel module
       (corresponding to up to Linux 3.11) and new APIs required by
       Mesa.

    4. Configurations combining a lower-end integrated GPU and a
       discrete card or, more generally, several cards sharing a common
       set of output ports are not directly supported. You must rely on
       your BIOS to provide a way to select the graphic card.

If the driver and the new ports are working for you or if you have
problems with them, please report on the freebsd-x11 at FreeBSD.org mailing
list, as explained on the wiki:
  https://wiki.freebsd.org/AMD_GPU#Reporting

Regarding patches for and/or a merge in FreeBSD 9, this is not a
priority at the moment. It's non trivial due to important changes to the
VM and atomic operations in FreeBSD 10. So please don't ask for patches
and be patient: we already know it would be useful.

Big Thanks go to:
    o  Konstantin Belousov (kib@) and Alexander Kabaev (kan@) for their
       invaluable help, without which the driver wouldn't be in the
       tree now.
    o  all early testers I mentionned in the commit messages, who made
       the driver stabilize by providing patches or bug reports.
    o  Koop Mast (kwm@) and Niclas Zeising (zeising@) for their work on
       preparing newer xf86-video-ati and Mesa ports and their useful
       suggestions.
    o  Alexander Rybalko (ray@) for his help on making radeonkms ready
       for the future newcons driver.

-- 
Jean-Sébastien Pédron

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