Intel Meteor Lake Graphics Declared Stable With Linux 6.7

With the pending changes set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 6.7 kernel, all known issues/limitations around the i915 kernel driver support for upcoming integrated graphics with Intel Meteor Lake laptop processors.

Last week Intel open-source driver engineers shared that they were aiming to finish up the Meteor Lake graphics support in time for Linux 6.7 -- and ahead of Meteor Lake processors officially launching in December. They've managed to deliver with two pull requests sent out today for DRM-Next, ahead of the Linux 6.7 merge window opening up at the end of the month. This means with the next kernel version the Meteor Lake graphics will be enabled out-of-the-box and no longer require the "i915.force_probe=" override option for force enabling the graphics support as is the case with prior kernel versions.

Intel engineer Tvrtko Ursulin explained in today's drm-intel-gt-next pull:

"As indicated that it may happen in the last pull, the remaining missing functionality for Meteorlake, enabling the GuC based TLB invalidation, has since been merged and platform thought to be ready for lifting out of force probe status.

Also for Meteorlake a correction on how L3 flushing is done landed."

That pull has the GuC-based TLB invalidation for Meteor Lake along with an L3 cache flushing fix. Following that Intel Linux engineer Rodrigo Vivi sent out this drm-intel-next pull to push it over the finish line and drop that "i915.force_probe" requirement. In other words, enabled by default / no longer experimental.

"The main reason for this extra PR is to ensure that we get MTL force_probe removed on 6.7. The platform has a good green picture in our BAT CI [continuous integration testing] currently and is stable."

So for those planning to pickup an Intel Meteor Lake laptop around the end of the year when they start appearing, Linux 6.7 is where you will find out-of-the-box Meteor Lake graphics support without having to jump through any extra hoops.

Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" mobile processors are set for release on 14 December. The Linux 6.7 merge window will open up at the end of October while the stable Linux 6.7 kernel release likely won't happen until early to mid January