Intel News Archives


2,912 Intel open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Linux 6.9 Continues Clearing Out Code For Intel's Defunct "Carillo Ranch" Platform
Linux 6.9 Continues Clearing Out Code For Intel's Defunct "Carillo Ranch" Platform

Last year Linux kernel developers began clearing out code for Intel's nearly two decade old "Carillo Ranch" platform that was a 90nm 32-bit single core processor for embedded devices in the sub 20 Watt space. It was a ~2007 product that never shipped but the Linux kernel code was left in the upstream tree until beginning to see it removed last year.

18 March 2024 - Intel Carillo Ranch - 3 Comments
Mesa 24.1 Adds Support For The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 170G
Mesa 24.1 Adds Support For The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 170G

The current Intel Data Center GPU Flex Series products that were announced in 2022 built off Arctic Sound M are the Data Center GPU Flex 140 and Data Center GPU Flex 170 while now a new "170G" variant was added for Intel's open-source Mesa OpenGL and Vulkan drivers.

14 March 2024 - Data Center GPU Flex 170G - 1 Comment
Mesa 24.1 Enables Intel Xe Kernel Driver Support By Default
Mesa 24.1 Enables Intel Xe Kernel Driver Support By Default

While the new Intel Xe kernel graphics driver was upstreamed in Linux 6.8 as this modern DRM driver that is opt-in for current generation hardware and aims to be the default for Lunar Lake / Xe2, currently with Mesa you must build the Intel ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D driver code with the "intel-xe-kmd" option to enable compatibility for this alternative kernel driver to i915. With Mesa 24.1 coming next quarter, that Intel Xe kernel driver support will be enabled out-of-the-box.

13 March 2024 - Intel Xe KMD - 7 Comments
Intel Continues Prepping The Linux Kernel For X86S
Intel Continues Prepping The Linux Kernel For X86S

Nearly one year ago Intel published the X86S specification (formerly stylized as "X86-S") for simplifying the Intel architecture by removing support for 16-bit and 32-bit operating systems. X86S is a big step forward with dropping legacy mode, 5-level paging improvements, and other modernization improvements for x86_64. With the Linux 6.9 kernel more x86S bits are in place for this ongoing effort.

12 March 2024 - More X86S Code In Linux 6.9 - 64 Comments
Intel Makes Open-Source Its Python NPU Acceleration Library
Intel Makes Open-Source Its Python NPU Acceleration Library

Intel has made open-source its NPU Acceleration Library (intel-npu-acceleration-library) as a user-space library for Windows and Linux systems for interfacing with the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) found initially on their new Meteor Lake laptops.

1 March 2024 - intel-npu-acceleration-library - 4 Comments
Intel Xe Kernel GPU Driver Starts Landing SR-IOV Bits & Other Features For Linux 6.9
Intel Xe Kernel GPU Driver Starts Landing SR-IOV Bits & Other Features For Linux 6.9

Upstreamed for Linux 6.8 is the experimental Xe kernel graphics driver that is a modern replacement to the "i915" Direct Rendering Manager driver. The Xe kernel driver targets Tigerlake graphics and newer while it won't be until Lunar Lake / Xe2 when it aims to become the default driver for Intel iGPU/dGPU graphics. For the upcoming Linux 6.9 kernel merge window are more feature changes and fixes to this new open-source Intel kernel graphics driver.

28 February 2024 - Intel Xe DRM Driver - 6 Comments
Intel HFI Driver Can "Save Tons Of CPU Cycles" By Only Enabling Itself When Needed
Intel HFI Driver Can "Save Tons Of CPU Cycles" By Only Enabling Itself When Needed

The Linux kernel has supported the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface "HFI" via the "intel_hfi" driver since 2022 for bettering supporting Core hybrid processors. The Intel HFI can be used for communicating performance and energy efficiency capabilities of individual CPU cores of the system. In turn the Linux kernel can leverage Intel HFI details for better task placement among the available CPU cores/threads. With a new patch series, the Intel HFI driver can "save tons of CPU cycles" by only enabling it when needed.

27 February 2024 - Intel HFI - 7 Comments
Linux 6.8 x86/urgent Update Beefs Up Protection Against Side Channel CPU Bugs
Linux 6.8 x86/urgent Update Beefs Up Protection Against Side Channel CPU Bugs

Sent in this morning via the "x86/urgent" pull request ahead of the Linux 6.8-rc6 kernel later today is a set of patches from Intel to ensure clearing of CPU buffers using the VERW instruction happens at the latest possible point in the return-to-userspace code path. This is being done to better protect against CPU bugs like Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS).

25 February 2024 - Intel MDS Buffers - 9 Comments
Intel Mesa Driver Code Working To Split Off Old Broadwell "Gen8" Graphics Code
Intel Mesa Driver Code Working To Split Off Old Broadwell "Gen8" Graphics Code

Intel's Iris Gallium3D driver for modern OpenGL support works on hardware going back to old Broadwell processors with "Gen8" integrated graphics as does the HasVK Vulkan driver for Haswell/Broadwell. But in allowing to focus on the common Skylake "Gen9" graphics and newer/future Intel graphics architectures, pending Mesa code is working to split-off that old Broadwell/Gen8 code. The Gen8 support will continue to be in-tree but separated from the rest of the compiler code so that the code can continue to be improved for newer Intel hardware without risking regressions/breaking those still on Broadwell era processors.

21 February 2024 - Focus On The Future - 14 Comments
Intel Making It Easier To Reproduce Linux GPU Hangs On Real Hardware
Intel Making It Easier To Reproduce Linux GPU Hangs On Real Hardware

Intel engineers working on their open-source Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan driver code currently replay captured error state / GPU hangs using a simulator, but a new patch proposal allows for replaying GPU hangs on the actual hardware. In turn this will hopefully help Intel driver developers better address some real-world issues.

16 February 2024 - Replay GPU Hangs - Add A Comment
HITMAN 3 Will Now Launch On Intel GPUs Under Linux After Hiding The GPU Vendor
HITMAN 3 Will Now Launch On Intel GPUs Under Linux After Hiding The GPU Vendor

While Intel is the company behind XeSS - Xe Super Sampling, under Linux it's an ongoing story of having to hide the fact that Intel graphics are in use when trying to enjoy Windows games running on Steam Play that are XeSS-enabled. The latest example is the HITMAN 3 game that can work on modern Arc Graphics as long as you conceal the fact under Linux that Intel graphics are being used.

13 February 2024 - XeSS Saga Continues - 10 Comments
Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 5.0 With 4~5x Faster C++ Object Sorting Using AVX-512
Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 5.0 With 4~5x Faster C++ Object Sorting Using AVX-512

It's been nearly one year to the day since outlining intel's AVX-512 powered sorting library to offer blazing fast sort speeds. Over the past year has brought the 1.0 release, new algorithms in v2.0, AVX2 support and more AVX-512 optimizations in v4.0, and now today Intel is out with x86-simd-sort 5.0 with yet more performance improvements.

12 February 2024 - x86-simd-sort 5.0 - 11 Comments
The Ongoing Open-Source Work To Enable Webcam Support On Recent Intel Laptops
The Ongoing Open-Source Work To Enable Webcam Support On Recent Intel Laptops

Webcamera support on recent generations of Intel laptops have tended to be a mess due to the Intel IPU6 requiring an out-of-tree kernel driver and a proprietary user-space component. But fortunately thanks to the work of Linar and Red Hat on a "SoftISP" implementation within libcamera, it's becoming possible to leverage these recent MIPI-based webcameras on an open-source software stack.

9 February 2024 - Intel IPU6 Mess - 10 Comments
Intel Arrow Lake Graphics Support Ready For Linux 6.9
Intel Arrow Lake Graphics Support Ready For Linux 6.9

Along with the recently merged Intel OpenGL and Vulkan driver support for Arrow Lake next-generation Core processors with Mesa 24.1, it looks like the i915 kernel graphics driver support for Arrow Lake will be all-set with the upcoming Linux 6.9 kernel cycle.

9 February 2024 - Arrow Lake - 1 Comment
Intel Thread Director Virtualization Patches Boost Some Workloads By ~14%
Intel Thread Director Virtualization Patches Boost Some Workloads By ~14%

Intel's hybrid core handling for modern Intel Core CPUs with a mix of P and E cores has largely been in good shape under Linux for a while. Intel Thread Director support has come along with various Linux kernel improvements to better handle task placement between the P and E cores. One area seeing new work now though is for virtual machines (VMs) running on Intel hybrid systems with a new Linux kernel patch series working on Thread Director Virtualization.

3 February 2024 - Thread Director Virtualization - 35 Comments
Intel Open Image Denoise Rolls Out Metal Support, Expanded AArch64 Support
Intel Open Image Denoise Rolls Out Metal Support, Expanded AArch64 Support

Intel's open-source oneAPI components continue to not only embrace Intel's diverse range of CPUs / GPUs / accelerators but continues to better support competing platforms too. Today's Open Image Denoise release candidate brings more for Apple hardware, AArch64 processors, and NVIDIA CUDA.

2 February 2024 - Open Image Denoise - 1 Comment
IPU6 Firmware Binaries Upstreamed For Recent Intel Laptops
IPU6 Firmware Binaries Upstreamed For Recent Intel Laptops

Webcameras on newer Intel laptops have been challenging for Linux use without resorting to an out-of-tree driver and proprietary user-space components, but that's been thankfully changing with progress being made on an open-source stack. There's still proprietary firmware necessary for enabling the IPU6 image processing unit, but at least that too is now in linux-firmware.git for easy distribution and packaging by Linux distributions.

1 February 2024 - linux-firmware.git - 8 Comments
It's Becoming Possible To Use The Webcam On Newer Intel Laptops With Open-Source Linux
It's Becoming Possible To Use The Webcam On Newer Intel Laptops With Open-Source Linux

While Intel typically does a great job with their open-source Linux hardware support with enabling all features under Linux and doing so in a timely manner -- often well in advance of the client and server hardware availability -- an exception in recent years has been around the web cam support for many newer Intel laptops. Since Alder Lake an increasing number of Intel-powered laptops have been relying on a raw MIPI camera sensor connected to the IPU6 IP. Intel has been tightly controlling the intellectual property around IPU6 so in turn their Linux support has consisted of an out-of-tree kernel driver and a proprietary user-space component. But thanks to Linaro and Red Hat, an open-source alternative has been forming.

26 January 2024 - But Not Yet Complete - 35 Comments
Intel's FRED Looks Like It Could Be Ready For Linux 6.9
Intel's FRED Looks Like It Could Be Ready For Linux 6.9

For the better part of two years we've seen Intel open-source software engineers working on preparing the Linux kernel for FRED, the Flexible Return and Event Delivery for defining new transitions for changing privilege levels. Intel's been working hard on the FRED kernel plumbing for better performance, lower response times, and improved robustness and it's looking like FRED could be set to land come Linux 6.9.

25 January 2024 - Flexible Return Event Delivery - 5 Comments
OpenVINO 2023.3 Brings Full Support For Intel Emerald Rapids, Broader GenAI & LLMs
OpenVINO 2023.3 Brings Full Support For Intel Emerald Rapids, Broader GenAI & LLMs

Intel engineers on Wednesday released OpenVINO 2023.3 as the latest major update to this leading open-source AI toolkit. The OpenVINO 2023.3 brings "full support" for new Emerald Rapids and Meteor Lake processors, other Intel hardware support improvements, and continuing to expand support around generative AI (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs).

25 January 2024 - OpenVINO 2023.3 - Add A Comment
Intel's Open-Source Vulkan Driver Wired Up To Support AMD's Radeon Memory Visualizer
Intel's Open-Source Vulkan Driver Wired Up To Support AMD's Radeon Memory Visualizer

While AMD's GPUOpen team developed the Radeon Memory Visualizer for their own Radeon graphics processors, thanks to the software working out well and being open-source and the profiling/dump format being public, the Intel open-source Vulkan Linux driver has added support for it. With the Intel ANV Mesa driver you can now generate Radeon Memory Visualizer (RMV) compatible dumps that can then be loaded into the GPUOpen software for analyzing the video memory behavior of Intel's integrated and discrete graphics.

23 January 2024 - RMV Profiling With Intel ANV Driver - 3 Comments
Intel Sends Out First Linux Patch For Clearwater Forest
Intel Sends Out First Linux Patch For Clearwater Forest

While Intel's Sierra Forest as their first all-E-core Xeon processor with up to 288 cores per socket isn't launching until around the middle of this calendar year, Intel Linux engineers already sent out their first kernel patch in beginning to target its successor: Clearwater Forest.

23 January 2024 - Intel Clearwater Forest - 4 Comments
Linux 6.8 Will Let You Know When x86 32-bit Support Is Disabled
Linux 6.8 Will Let You Know When x86 32-bit Support Is Disabled

Linux 6.7 introduced the "ia32_emulation=" boot option for enabling/disabling support for x86 32-bit programs and the ability to execute 32-bit system calls. This is part of the effort of some Linux distributions working to restrict x86 32-bit user-space support where not needed in order to reduce the software attack surface while still having a boot-time option for those wanting to enable 32-bit support or to otherwise disable it if your kernel build keeps it enabled.

17 January 2024 - IA32 Emulation Disabled - 17 Comments
Intel Meteor Lake CPUs Will Be Able To Clock Higher On Linux 6.8
Intel Meteor Lake CPUs Will Be Able To Clock Higher On Linux 6.8

Following last week's Linux 6.8 power management updates, Linux PM/ACPI subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki of Intel sent out a secondary set of changes this morning. Most notable with this second round of power management material is allowing Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors to clock higher with the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.

16 January 2024 - Intel Meteor Lake P-State Fix - 5 Comments

2912 Intel news articles published on Phoronix.