--- Comment #10 from Linus Torvalds torvalds@linux-foundation.org 2011-08-25 22:43:53 --- On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 2:25 PM, bugzilla-daemon@bugzilla.kernel.org wrote:
Interestingly, the RS780 managed to load its firmware (also all compiled into the kernel) even w/o this patch.
Does the R600+ driver perhaps load firmware only at open time?
The problem with the r100 driver is that it loads firmware very early on, at driver init time. Generally it's *much* better if you request the firmware when the device is actually opened, rather than when the driver loads.
That doesn't make any sense for radeon graphics drivers, since the firmware is required to initialise the engines on the GPU, which you really want to do so you can turn on the screen and stuff.
Dave.