Intel Publishes Open-Source Graphics Driver Code For Bringing Up "Geminilake"

Coming out this morning from the Intel Open-Source Technology Center is their initial hardware enablement code for the future "Geminilake" hardware with their Linux graphics driver stack.

Geminilake (also referred to as "Gemini Lake" within early reports of this future hardware) is the successor to Apollo Lake and will be 4~6 Watt SoCs. This Linux driver code coming out today is for enabling the graphics on Geminilake. According to earlier leaks, Geminilake isn't expected to be released until Q4'2017 or even early 2018. This just continues Intel's usual trend of getting out their open-source Linux support code early so it can be refined and work its way into the mainline Linux kernel, Mesa, etc, well ahead of the product's debut so there is good out-of-the-box support in Linux distributions by the time products are shipping.

Bringing up Geminilake within the Intel DRM kernel driver is only 508 lines of new code (138 deletions), so it's not too big of a difference over all the code so far for Skylake/Kabylake/Apollolake in there right now and built off the Broxton code-paths. Further reinforcing not many changes compared to the current graphics driver code, Gemini Lake is still considered a "gen9lp" platform.

The only Geminilake PCI IDs added so far for graphics are 0x3184 and 0x3185 but presumably more will be added later.

Overall, no real secrets in digging through the early enablement code as it's mostly just adapting to use the Broxton and Skylake code already written and then just some changes around initialization, etc, and then some minor changes like Gemini Lake has four planes per pipe.

Great to see Intel continuing to get this next-generation code out there early and will presumably see the initial support land for Linux 4.10~4.11 cycles.