Intel Brings Huge Improvements To Xe Kernel GPU Driver For Linux 6.8, Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake Gain Additional Support

Intel Brings Huge Improvements To Xe Kernel GPU Driver For Linux 6.8, Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake Gain Additional Support 1

Intel has accelerated software developments in Linux, offering an improved Xe Kernel GPU driver & adding Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake support.

Intel's debut of Arc drivers in Linux was a fairly slow start compared to other platforms, mainly since Team Blue was a bit late in providing enhanced driver capabilities. However, after two years of development, Intel has finally submitted its "revamped" Xe kernel graphics driver for submission in the mainline kernel.

According to Phoronix reports, the new "Xe" graphics driver replaces the traditional i915 DRM kernel driver at Linux and comes with support for support Tiger Lake graphics and newer, both for mobile and desktop GPUs.

Introduce a new DRM driver for Intel GPUs

Xe, is a new driver for Intel GPUs that supports both integrated and discrete platforms. The experimental support starts with Tiger Lake. i915 will continue be the main production driver for the platforms up to Meteor Lake and Alchemist. Then the goal is to make this Intel Xe driver the primary driver for Lunar Lake and newer platforms.

via Kernel.org

Diving into what the new Xe graphics driver at Linux will bring, it comes with redesigned user interfaces, and several other "engineering" improvements that are aimed at making cross-CPU architecture compatibility much more refined with intel graphics. Following are all the changes added for Xe2 (Battlemage) GPUs:

drm/xe: Add performance tuning settings for MTL and Xe2

drm/xe/xe2: Add MOCS table

drm/xe/xe2: Respond to TRTT faults as unsuccessful page fault

drm/xe/xe2: Add initial workarounds

drm/xe/xe2: Set tile y type in XY_FAST_COPY_BLT to Tile4

drm/xe/xe2: Update MOCS fields in blitter instructions

drm/xe/xe2: Determine bios enablement for flat ccs on igfx

drm/xe/xe2: Modify main memory to ccs memory ratio.

drm/xe/xe2: Allocate extra pages for ccs during bo create

drm/xe/xe2: Updates on XY_CTRL_SURF_COPY_BLT

drm/xe/xe2: Update chunk size for each iteration of ccs copy

drm/xe/xe2: Update emit_pte to use compression enabled PAT index

drm/xe/xe2: Handle flat ccs move for igfx.

drm/xe/xe2: Modify xe_bo_test for system memory

drm/xe/xe2: Support flat ccs

drm/xe/xe2: Extend reserved stolen sizes

drm/xe/xe2: Add missing mocs entry

drm/xe/xe2: Follow XeHPC for TLB invalidation

drm/xe/xe2: Add one more bit to encode PAT to ppgtt entries

drm/xe/pat: Add debugfs node to dump PAT

drm/xe/xe2: Update render/compute context image sizes

drm/xe/xe2: Add GT topology readout

drm/xe/xe2: Add MCR register steering for primary GT

drm/xe/xe2: Add MCR register steering for media GT

drm/xe/xe2: Update context image layouts

drm/xe/xe2: Handle fused-off CCS engines

drm/xe/xe2: AuxCCS is no longer used

drm/xe/xe2: Define Xe2_LPG IP features

drm/xe/xe2: Define Xe2_LPM IP features

drm/xe/xe2: Track VA bits independently of max page table level

drm/xe/xe2: Program GuC's MOCS on Xe2 and beyond

drm/xe/xe2: Program correct MOCS registers

drm/xe/xe2: Update SVG state handling

drm/xe/xe2: Program PAT tables

Our team was focused on putting together a driver that uses most, if not all, of the key drm concepts and has a functional display that is shared with i915. All the platforms are still protected by the force_probe protection because they are either officially supported by i915, or because they are still under enablement like Lunar Lake.

Besides the cross-driver collaboration and enabling of upcoming hardware, one of our key areas will be to improve performance and address reports by users so that the driver keeps getting better.

Apart from the Xe graphics driver, Intel has also brought in next-gen support for existing software packages, such as Intel's VC Intrinsics, which has gained support for Intel's Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake graphics architectures. This means that the Xe-LPG+ (Arrow Lake / Alchemist) and the Xe2 (Lunar Lake / Battlemage) architectures have gained support for the software project, which shows Team Blue's dedication to providing early hardware enablement at Linux, especially for its upcoming products.

Intel's Arc and integrated graphics platform is shaping up to reach a "maturity" state in Linux, with Team Blue's efforts of pushing out continuous updates, along with enablement for next-gen architectures, ensuring a seamless experience during the launch period.

News Sources: Phoronix #1, Phoronix #2