Intel Continues Prepping Meteor Lake Graphics On Linux, Adds VRR eDP Support

Due to not having sent in any feature pull requests to DRM-Next in prior weeks due to a miscommunication, sent out today was a bit set of Intel "i915" kernel graphics driver changes targeting this next kernel cycle.

As with recent kernel versions, besides Intel open-source engineers being very busy preparing for the next-generation "Xe" kernel mode driver that has yet to be mainlined, much of the i915 attention is on preparing Meteor Lake graphics/display support ahead of those next-gen laptops.

Linux 6.3 brought initial Meteor Lake display support while for Linux 6.5 that work remains ongoing. The Meteor Lake display enablement work has continued into the Linux 6.5 cycle but will hopefully be squared away soon. As of right now, the Meteor Lake graphics support on Linux is still set to be treated as "experimental" for Linux 6.5, but hopefully for 6.5 or otherwise 6.6 we'll find the support enabled out-of-the-box / production ready. Especially with the likes of Ubuntu 23.10 going for Linux 6.5~6.6 along with the other fall distributions, it would be nice to see Meteor Lake working out-of-the-box on Linux distributions when those next-gen chips begin appearing in laptops later this calendar year.

Aside from Meteor Lake enabling, there is a fair amount of work on Variable Rate Refresh (VRR) support for VESA Adaptive-Sync. The i915 driver now allows VRR to be toggled during fast-sets and arbitrary refresh rate support with VRR is now working for eDP laptop panels.

This Intel kernel graphics driver in Linux 6.5 is also set to support async page-flips on linear buffers for display hardware v12 and newer, there is a new DebugFS interface around clock frequencies, various i915 code refactoring/clean-ups, and many different fixes.

The big set of feature patches making up this Intel i915 pull to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.5 cycle can be found on dri-devel. We'll see if Intel ends up submitting any more feature code for the i915 driver ahead of the Linux 6.5 merge window opening up around the end of June.