Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee — Issue #52: Support for AMD hybrid technology (PowerXpress)
Author: Lekensteyn
Created: 2012-01-21 23:37:18+00:00
State: open
Labels: amd

It's confirmed that the concept for Bumblebee also works for AMD Hybrid graphics: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-909802.html (via http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?68327-Bumblebee-Has-Tumbleweed-For-NVIDIA-Optimus-On-Linux&p=247659#post247659)

For supporting AMD hybrids, we need to:

- modify the PCI Bus ID detection to check for both the NVIDIA and AMD vendor IDs (add an extra field to the bb_status struct)
- modify documentation, texts, comments to refer to "discrete video card" or "discrete %s video card" instead of "nvidia card". Replace "Optimus" by "Hybrid Graphics" where applicable
- adjust the switching methods in switch/ (mainly switcheroo) to detect radeon drivers (bbswitch won't detect a card and does not get loaded anyway)
- separate xorg error log analysis?
- add xorg.conf for radeon (and fglrx), extend bumblebee.conf
- Look for ways to extend bbswitch supporting AMD, possibly helpful: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next-history.git;a=blob;f=drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon_atpx_handler.c;hb=HEAD
- (edit if I forgot something)

I don't have AMD hardware to play with, but it shouldn't be difficult to extend bbswitch for AMD PowerXpress. The other changes are neither difficult.