DRM IN_FORMATS_ASYNC Coming For The Intel Driver With Linux 6.16

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 21 May 2025 at 05:31 AM EDT. Add A Comment

Sent out last week was one final batch of drm-misc-next updates ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel cycle. Besides a couple fixes, most notable was new async flipping code for the Intel DRM driver with the IN_FORMATS_ASYNC DRM property.

Landing for Linux 6.16 is the "IN_FORMATS_ASYNC" DRM plane property. IN_FORMATS_ASYNC is to be used initially by just the Intel driver for buffer format and modifier pairs supported by a given plan for asynchronous flips. The patch series for exposing the modifiers/formats supported by async flips further notes:

"All of the formats/modifiers supported by the plane during synchronous flips are nor supported by asynchronous flips. The formats/modifiers exposed to user by IN_FORMATS exposes all formats/modifiers supported by plane and this list varies for async flips. If the async flip supported formats/modifiers are exposed to the user, user based on this list can take decision to proceed or not and avoid flip failures during async flips."

Waiting in user-space is already this open GNOME Mutter merge request from seven months ago for supporting the tearing modifiers DRM property. In turn that should help address this merge request for supporting async page flipping or tearing under GNOME.

👁 IN_FORMATS_ASYNC

The IN_FORMATS_ASYNC addition is the main focal point of last week's drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 6.16 cycle.