I think LWN missummarized the announcement... it's the first release of this driver; it's of
course NOT the first driver for this hardware; one can argue it's the third (after the normal
ati and then the avivo drivers).
Dave Airlie and co have the same features... and more in the "other", full driver already
since some time, including various pieces of acceleration:
http://airlied.livejournal.com/53129.html