AMD skips to DCN6 for its next-generation Radeon display engine
AMD has started publishing Linux driver patches for Display Core Next 6, or DCN6. The display engine is connected to GC 13.0.1 in the code, which is expected to belong to AMD’s future GFX13 graphics architecture also known as RDNA5. The new code therefore provides another early reference to the graphics technology expected to power AMD’s next Radeon generation.
DCN6 adds new image-scaling functions
DCN is the part of the GPU responsible for display output, image scaling, pixel formats and monitor pipelines. It is separate from the shader architecture responsible for rendering games and compute workloads.
© Phoronix 
© Phoronix The early DCN6 patches add scaling linearity and cositing surface controls. They also introduce a UPSP pre-scaler that can upsample 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 content before the normal scaling process. Support for more pixel formats is included as well.
The driver currently moves from DCN 4.2.1 to DCN 6.0.0. AMD’s patches contain at least one DCN5 reference, but no complete DCN5 implementation has appeared in the AMDGPU driver. It is unclear whether DCN5 is reserved for another platform or was removed from the public roadmap.
Hardware specifications remain unknown
The patches do not disclose the number of Compute Units, memory configuration, clock speeds or gaming performance of the GFX13 GPUs. They also do not confirm which DisplayPort or HDMI versions will be supported.
AMD is beginning the driver work well before products using the new display engine reach the market. More GFX13 and DCN6 code is expected to appear through additional AMDGPU patch series as development continues.
Sources: Phoronix
