Intel Begins Sorting Out SR-IOV Support For The Xe Kernel Graphics Driver

One of the great aspects of Intel integrated and discrete graphics is the broad support for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV). Intel "Gen12" graphics back to Tigerlake can handle SR-IOV when there aren't any firmware woes or other issues at play. There is SR-IOV support currently with the i915 kernel driver but Intel engineers are working to architect optimal SR-IOV integration into their forthcoming Xe DRM kernel driver.

Due to the Linux kernel policy of not breaking the user-space ABI, Intel graphics driver engineers have been taking their time crafting the new interfaces while developing the modern Xe driver that is focused on Gen12 graphics and newer -- both for discrete and integrated graphics. On Friday they posted their "request for comments" plan around SR-IOV support.

With their SR-IOV support for Xe they are planning to introduce some new sysfs interfaces for additional SR-IOV attributes and make other improvements over what's found today in the i915 DRM kernel driver. For most users these details won't mean much besides the refreshing fact of Intel continuing to support SR-IOV across their spectrum of graphics products on Linux moving forward.

Those curious about all the fine technical details on the SR-IOV support plans for the Intel Xe Direct Rendering Manager driver can find their RFC design document on the dri-devel mailing list.

The Intel Xe DRM kernel driver has yet to be mainlined to the Linux kernel even in experimental form, but hopefully we'll finally see that happen in the early months of 2024 to make it easier for testing and evaluation by enthusiasts. The Xe driver is designed around modern graphics needs and kernel interfaces compared to i915, ultimately should be faster with all the improvements, better support features like sparse resources, and will also be better supported on non-x86 kernels for those using Intel Arc Graphics on the like of AArch64 / POWER / RISC-V.