Intel News Archives

According to the Coreboot camp, future Intel systems with FSP 3.0 and Universal Scalable Firmware (USF) will be even less friendly for open-source system firmware.

Intel on Wednesday sent in another batch of i915 kernel graphics driver updates to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of next month's Linux 5.18 merge window.

Last month Intel released SVT-AV1 0.9 as a big step-up for this open-source AV1 encoder with delivering even better performance and also adding new preset options for much higher performance capabilities. Out today is SVT-AV1 0.9.1 with some incremental improvements over the January version.

Landing in Mesa 22.1-devel today for the Intel open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver is a fix allowing more modern Windows games running under Steam Play (Proton) to now render correctly with the Intel graphics.

Intel has a very exciting acquisition to announce this morning - not another hardware company, but they have acquired Linutronix to ramp up their investment in Linux/open-source engineering.

Intel's open-source Linux engineers have been working a lot recently on the kernel's support for Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). Intel TDX has similarities to AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and is ultimately about better protecting virtual machines. The latest patch series published for Linux is the Intel TDX Guest Attestation support for being able to verify a TDX VM's trustworthiness via a third-party server.

Intel's Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) driver is ready to be merged for the Linux 5.18 kernel now that it's been queued into the x86 platform driver's "for-next" branch.

Last month Intel posted a new set of Linux patches for shadow stack support as part of the Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) found within their latest processors. Also part of Intel's CET is Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) while Intel said they were going to first focus on shadow stack (SS) and worry about IBT later. Less than one month later, new Indirect Branch Tracking patches for the Linux kernel have been taking shape.

Intel's forthcoming Arc Graphics "Alchemist" (DG2) graphics cards do support Resizable BAR functionality as covered when they previously published Linux patches for it. They are also now working on a DG2 feature for "small BAR" support.

Building off Intel graphics driver code already staged for the upcoming Linux 5.18 merge window, another round of feature changes were sent in this week to DRM-Next for adding to the queue ahead of this next kernel cycle.

In addition to the road-map update for Arc Graphics and Sapphire Rapids along with announcing Falcon Shores as a server CPU/APU/XPU pulling in Xe Graphics, Intel's 2022 Investor Meeting also made other updates and some new disclosures.

As part of Intel's Investor Meeting today, the company provided an updated technical roadmap with some interesting bits of information.

Intel has released a new version of their open-source, interactive visualization software OSPray Studio that is built atop their OSPray ray-tracing rendering engine.

Last June the Linux kernel disabled support for Intel's ENQCMD instructions as the kernel support was found to be "broken beyond repair" for this feature that's part of the Data Streaming Accelerator with upcoming Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors. Fortunately, now in time for Sapphire Rapids ramping up, Intel engineers have fixed up the ENQCMD code and looks like the next Linux kernel cycle will re-enable the functionality.

One day after AMD completed its acquisition of Xilinx, Intel has announced this morning they plan to acquire Tower Semiconductor.

Intel's open-source Compute-Runtime stack for providing OpenCL and Level Zero support for Skylake/Gen9 graphics and newer up through their latest discrete graphics offerings is out with a new release.

For Intel's Raptor Lake as the successor to Alder Lake that is due out later this year, Linux 5.17 begins bringing up support for it while with Linux 5.18 more enablement work is landing.

Intel engineers have been working heavily on the Linux's Compute Express Link (CXL) subsystem for kernel. As the next step in that endeavor, pending now is the CXL memory driver that looks like it will make its introduction in Linux 5.18.

Linux 5.18 is looking to be another very busy kernel cycle for Intel as in addition to Alder Lake N graphics, the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI), and integrating Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), Intel's PECI kernel code is finally being mainlined.

We still don't know what features Intel is planning to capitalize upon with their Software Defined Silicon "SDSi" functionality in future CPUs, but it turns out the kernel mainlining of the necessary software support is now expanded to land with Linux 5.18. With the SDSi kernel support coming together rather quickly, it's possible we could be seeing Software Defined Silicon rather soon.

Intel on Tuesday submitted to DRM-Next what is likely to be their biggest set of feature updates for their "i915" kernel graphics driver in this spring's Linux 5.18.

The Intel Crocus Mesa driver providing open-source Gallium3D support for older i965 through Haswell era graphics hardware now offers much better OpenGL compatibility profile support.

As part of Intel making a number of security disclosures public today, Intel has published updated CPU microcode images for Linux users via their GitHub repository.

Linux 5.16 brought improvements/fixes for Alder Lake S to help the likes of the Core i9 12900K deliver better performance. With the in-development Linux 5.17, the i9-12900K is looking even better. And then on the horizon for Linux 5.18 is the possibility of even better performance thanks to Intel's Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI/EHFI) positioned to land.

Ahead of upcoming Intel Arc graphics cards shipping with ray-tracing capabilities, Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver has landed its VK_KHR_ray_query support.

Intel's open-source engineers have already begun preparing Linux kernel patches around 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) support that will be known as WiFi 7.

With the Linux 5.18 kernel coming later this year, the Intel Protected Processor Inventory Number (PPIN) will be more easily exposed for their server processors.

While much of the Intel DG2/Alchemist open-source driver support has already been upstreamed into the Linux kernel, Mesa for OpenGL and Vulkan, and related components like IGC and Compute-Runtime, there are various bits still pending ahead of the Intel Arc graphics cards set to make their debut in the next few months. One of those pieces still working their way upstream is enabling the GSC block, the Graphics System Controller.

The Linux 5.18 kernel this spring is adding support for the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI, also talked about sometimes as the Enhanced Hardware Feedback interface - EHFI).

Intel today published their annual security report that provides various insights into the different security vulnerabilities disclosed and mitigated over the past calendar year.

Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver for Linux systems now has experimental support for mesh shaders that work with their forthcoming Intel Arc DG2/Alchemist graphics cards.

Intel today is announcing Project Circuit Breaker as a broadening of its bug bounty program for "elite hackers" to help discover areas for improvement within Intel's hardware/software security.

A change currently being evaluated for Intel's "i915" Linux kernel graphics driver would make it easier for building driver support for their forthcoming discrete graphics products for targeting other non-x86 CPU architectures like Arm

While Intel has not publicly announced their plans around Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), the Linux kernel patches allowing activation of licensed CPU features is continuing to move forward toward mainline integration.

For years Intel has been working on Linux patches for supporting their Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET) with Indirect Branch Tracking and Shadow Stack support. It's been in the works for years and through many revisions while now they are pursuing a new route and focusing just on the Shadow Stack user-space functionality.

Intel open-source engineer Marcel Holtmann is marking the end of January with new releases to their ConnMan Linux network connection manager software along with a new IWD as their iNet Wireless Daemon as an alternative to WPA_Supplicant on Linux systems.

While it shouldn't be too surprising given Intel's open-source track record, but with the in-development Linux 5.17 kernel are once again many prominent additions from new/future hardware support to enabling exciting features.

Ahead of the Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards shipping this year, Intel's open-source developers have continued ironing out the Linux driver support. The most recent kernel patches are for getting their Resizable BAR "ReBAR" support in order.

As expected, Intel's open-source "ANV" driver is ready to go with Vulkan 1.3 for Mesa 22.0.

Intel's "i915" kernel graphics driver has been patched for a software issue that could lead to malicious user-space trigger DMAR read/write faults or worse is the possibility of user-space gaining access to random memory pages. Unfortunately, the security fix comes with performance implications.

As part of pushing it across the Vulkan 1.3 milestone, Intel's open-source graphics driver developers have merged their VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering support to mainline.

In addition to Mesa 22.0 landing Vulkan 1.3 support today with the Radeon RADV and Intel ANV Vulkan drivers, Mesa today also received initial support for next-gen Raptor Lake S processors.

After recently carrying out the Core i5 12400 Linux benchmarks against other modern processors, for curiosity I ran some benchmarks on some older hardware going back to AMD Kaveri and Intel Sandy Bridge for a look at how the modern Ubuntu performance compares across all those systems.

To date the Intel Linux graphics driver has supported Intel's DG2 "Alchemist" G10 and G11 sub-platforms/variants as the main designs to this point. However, at the end of last year we began seeing "G12" references surface in their compute stack and now the Intel open-source Linux kernel driver is formally preparing the DG2-G12 variant support.

Way back in August Intel posted a set of Linux kernel patches for supporting "unaccepted memory" by the Linux kernel in preparation for next-generation Xeon processors and speeding up the boot time for guest virtual machines making use of Intel's Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) security feature. Unaccepted memory support hasn't yet made it to the mainline kernel but now a second iteration of the patches have been posted.

Intel's Media Driver 22.1.1 has been released as their firsr 22.x series open-source GPU video encode/decode software release. This quarterly update introduces new hardware support and a number of feature updates.

Intel ended out the week with a huge update to ISPC, the Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler. ISPC is Intel's LLVM-based compiler focused on its C variant with extensions for single program, multiple data (SPMD) programming. Interestingly with this release is the introduction of AMD Zen 1/2/3 targeting and even the PlayStation 5 while also adding support for forthcoming Intel Arc "Alchemist" (Xe HPG) hardware.

In addition to Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers being quite busy preparing for upcoming Intel Arc "Alchemist" (DG2) graphics cards on the consumer side, they have concurrently been preparing for Xe HP "Ponte Vecchio" hardware too. One of the big undertakings on that side from the driver perspective is bringing up multiple tiles.

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers have now committed the DG2/Alchemist graphics card PCI IDs and device information data to Mesa 22.0 for their OpenGL and Vulkan driver support, but for now until the Linux kernel support is baked this is disabled.

A patch merged into Mesa 22.0 on Tuesday for Intel's "ANV" open-source Vulkan Linux driver is helping bump up the perforrmance in modern games.