Novell has revealed that the next RadeonHD driver for Linux will bring over 55 significant updates and changes. This includes new support for the Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series. Since these chips introduces DisplayPort support, there was work more than usually to get the drivers working, but after the guys over at Phoronix tested the new driver, they were left with a positive impression. The fact is that these 55 updates makes up more than 7,200 lines of code.
Much of the work has been put into reworking the analog and digital outputs, especially the latter has been reworked to make room for future DisplayPort support. Most importantly, the encoders and transmitters have been split up and, among others, support for dual-link monitors has now been introduced.
TV-out support? Not just yet. Even though many of these updates do bring us much closer, we’re not quite there yet;
”The TV-related commits to this point include adding TV detection, parsing of TV data tables in AtomBIOS, adding AtomBIOS support for setting up the TV encoder, an option to pass the TV standard, and monitor support for TVs. Egbert Eich had mentioned that the work left to do for RadeonHD TV-Out support is just putting all of these pieces together. This TV-Out support may come within the next couple of weeks.”
Novell also encourages R500/R600 users to try out the new driver, but it’s not specific as to why.
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