Intel Graphics Compiler 1.0.9289 Released As A Huge Update

Intel just released IGC 1.0.9289 as a huge update to their open-source Graphics Compiler used on Linux currently by their OpenCL/oneAPI Level Zero compute stack and also by Windows with their official driver.

The LLVM-based Intel Graphics Compiler has been maturing well over the past few years since its original introduction as part of their OpenCL "NEO" driver on Linux. Intel has even begun using IGC on Windows within their widely-used driver stack there while Intel's Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers may eventually transition to using IGC too for having a unified graphics compiler across targets.

Released minutes ago was Intel Graphics Compiler 1.0.9289 as one of the biggest updates in a while. IGC 1.0.9289 implements a lot more SPIR-V IR features for going from the OpenCL Extended Instruction Set, automatic detection of SPMD / ESIMD / SPMD+ESIMD SPIR-V modules, support for new extensions like SPIR-V's SPV_INTEL_group_instructions, supporting now relocations inside const/global sections, numerous changes to its Vector Compute "VC" back-end, enabling link-time optimizations (LTO) for stage compilation, preemption for the VC path with Skylake and newer, and a number of other changes.

IGC normally sees weekly-ish source releases while this is their first public release since the end of September, so as such there is a ton included as part of this new version.

IGC sources along with pre-built Ubuntu binaries for v1.0.9289 can be downloaded from GitHub. Upon the next Intel Compute-Runtime release incorporating the new IGC, sounds like it's a good time for issuing new Intel OpenCL Linux benchmarks.