[Xorg-driver-geode] recent Linux kernel developments and their effect on Geode X.org support

[Martin-Éric Racine]

Hello everyone,

As you might have heard, the Linux kernel recently acquired a new of
setting the screen resolution at bootup (kernel mode setting a.k.a.
KMS) which X.org has started to leverage. Other recent restructuring
in the Linux kernel modules have impacted performance on a Geode in
one way or another, some positives, some negatives.

As such, porting the Geode X.org driver to KMS has been added to our
roadmap at http://wiki.x.org/wiki/AMDGeodeDriver

I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that our goal of fixing Media
GX (a.k.a. GX2) auto-detection still hasn't been reached, because
achieving it first requires merging GX1 support into the Geode X.org
driver (currently covered by the nearly identical Cyrix and NSC X.org
drivers) to get rid of a PCI ID overlap between the NSC and Geode
driver. Once this step has been accomplished, we can deprecate Cyrix
and NSC, and focus on streamlining the unified support for
GX1/SC/GX2/LX inside the Geode X.org driver.

Volunteers to reach this GX1 integration milestone are extremely
welcome, because few of us have any GX1/SC hardware on hand to develop
and test the code merge and we simple cannot risk doing it
blindfolded. As such, if you have access to GX1 or SC hardware and any
coding skill at all, please try and contribute. If necessary, former
AMD employees who are reading this mailing list can guide your efforts
as required.

Cheers!
Martin-Éric