Intel News Archives


2,916 Intel open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Intel Protected Xe Path Code Updated, Now Defaults PXP Code To Disabled

Intel's open-source driver engineers remain very active on bringing up their discrete graphics card support under Linux with restructuring of the kernel driver to handle local/dedicated memory among a variety of other changes needed. Plus there are new features with the latest generation of Intel graphics such as the Protected Xe Path (PXP) for hardware-protected sessions for multi-user / multi-process scenarios. The Intel PXP code for their Linux driver has been in the works since last year and the latest revision now submitted.

25 May 2021 - Intel PXP - 2 Comments
Linux 5.14 To Bring Intel IGC Driver Support For AF_XDP Zero-Copy

After Intel originally proposed zero-copy capability for the Linux kernel's AF_XDP high performance packet processing code years ago and implemented for their higher performance network hardware/drivers, with Linux 5.14 the common Intel "IGC" Gigabit Ethernet driver is set to introduce AF_XDP zero-copy support.

24 May 2021 - AF_XDP Zero-Copy - 2 Comments
Intel AMX Support Continues Being Prepped For The Linux Kernel

Intel engineers have been publishing open-source/Linux enablement patches around Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) for nearly one year now. While Intel Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" with AMX support is expected around the end of this year, one of the key pieces yet to land is the Linux kernel support.

24 May 2021 - Advanced Matrix Extensions - 2 Comments
Toggling Spectre Mitigations On Xeon Scalable Ice Lake Show Little Runtime Difference
Toggling Spectre Mitigations On Xeon Scalable Ice Lake Show Little Runtime Difference

As usual when getting my hands on a new processor family, I was curious about the performance difference if booting the Xeon Platinum 8380 "Ice Lake" processors with the Spectre security mitigations disabled at run-time. Ultimately there was very little difference when using the standard "mitigations=off" option for these new Intel server processors.

23 May 2021 - Xeon Platinum 8380 - 5 Comments
Intel Tiger Lake Performance On Ubuntu 21.04 Benchmarks

With recently showing desktops and servers enjoying better performance on Ubuntu 21.04 through high end hardware like Xeon Ice Lake, you might be wondering what this means for mobile Linux performance... Here are some quick weekend benchmarks of the Dell XPS laptop with Core i7 1165G7 "Tiger Lake" on Ubuntu 20.10 versus 21.04.

23 May 2021 - Core i7 1165G7 - 8 Comments
Intel Working On TTM Integration For Discrete vRAM Management

More than a decade ago when the open-source graphics driver stack was being modernized with kernel mode-setting and better handling the stack for OpenGL, composited desktops and the like, TTM (Translation Table Maps) was born for managing GPU video RAM by the kernel Direct Rendering Manager drivers. While Intel initially expressed interest in TTM, they ultimately decided to create GEM as the Graphics Execution Manager for handling their video memory management needs. Now in 2021 with Intel aggressively pursuing discrete graphics, they are working on TTM support.

18 May 2021 - TTM Over GEM - 11 Comments
Intel Seeks More Comments From Developers On Key Locker Implementation For Linux

One of the features already found in new Intel "Tiger Lake" CPUs but not yet supported by the Linux kernel is Key Locker for securing AES keys on the system. Going back months there has been various patch series working toward Key Locker support while the actual patch series getting things ready for usage was just sent out again under a "request for comments" flag.

14 May 2021 - Intel Key Locker - 7 Comments
Intel Posts Latest Linux Patches For Reporting Per-Client GPU/Media Engine Utilization

For two years now Intel open-source engineers have floated patches for reporting per-client engine utilization for showing on an application level how much it's leveraging the Intel graphics render/3D, blitter, and video/multimedia engines. This can be used for some nifty system information reporting like a GPU top or other system monitoring functionality. The latest version of these patches were sent out this week.

14 May 2021 - Will It Get Merged Now? - 8 Comments
Intel Explores Write Protecting Page Tables Using Upcoming PKS Feature

As an additional security measure for the Linux kernel, Intel engineers are exploring making kernel page tables read-only and to then only allow writing on a per-CPU basis when they need to be modified. This would be handled using the PKS functionality found with future Intel processors.

5 May 2021 - Protection Keys for Supervisor - Add A Comment
Mesa 21.2 Begins Seeing Intel Xe-HP Graphics Driver Changes

With Mesa 21.1 now branched for this collection of primarily OpenGL/Vulkan open-source drivers for Linux, feature development is on for Mesa 21.2 that will debut in Q3. One of the first major changes to land for Mesa 21.2 is the beginning of the graphics compiler support for Intel's forthcoming Xe-HP high performance graphics processor.

16 April 2021 - Intel Xe-HP Compiler Bits - 1 Comment
Patches Resubmitted For Linux With Selectable Intel Graphics Platform Support

Back in early 2018 were patches proposed for selectable platform support when building Intel's kernel graphics driver so users/distributions if desired could disable extremely old hardware support and/or cater kernel builds for specific Intel graphics generations. Three years later those patches have been re-proposed.

16 April 2021 - Disable Old Cruft - 1 Comment
Intel DG1 Graphics Card Nears Working State On Linux

While these kernel patches aren't expected to land until the Linux 5.14 kernel cycle later in the summer, a set of 19 patches published on Monday morning begin allowing a test system to boot with the DG1 graphics card.

12 April 2021 - Intel DG1 Patches - 36 Comments
Intel Rocket Lake Target Added To GCC 11

While Intel is often very proactive in adding new CPU families to the open-source GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers where it tends to land a year or more in advance of the processors actually shipping, occasionally there are slipups. Today in fact the "Rocket Lake" support finally was merged into GCC 11 days ahead of that compiler release and after the CPUs were already launched at the end of March.

12 April 2021 - -march=rocketlake - 2 Comments
GCC 11 Lands A Last Minute Optimization For Intel Skylake
GCC 11 Lands A Last Minute Optimization For Intel Skylake

While Skylake was introduced a half-decade ago already, Intel's open-source engineers aren't done relentlessly optimizing for it and subsequent 14nm processors. Hitting the GCC 11 open-source compiler today was an optimization for benefiting Skylake through the likes of Cascade Lake with some possible performance benefits.

6 April 2021 - GCC 11 Skylake Optimization - Add A Comment
The Current State Of The Intel "Crocus" Gallium3D Driver

The Intel "Crocus" Gallium3D driver in development for supporting old Intel i965 IGPs through Haswell continues making progress by the upstream, open-source Mesa3D community for hopefully one day replacing Intel's classic "i965" Mesa driver.

5 April 2021 - Gallium3D For Old Intel - 24 Comments
Intel Graphics Compiler 1.0.6748 Released With CM-CL Library

Intel's open-source developers have released a new version of IGC, the Intel Graphics Compiler that is used by their open-source Linux compute stack, recently was transitioned for use by their Windows driver too, and might eventually be piped into their Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers.

1 April 2021 - Intel IGC 1.0.6748 - 2 Comments
More Intel Core i5 11600K, Core i9 11900K Benchmarks
More Intel Core i5 11600K, Core i9 11900K Benchmarks

Along with our Intel Core i5 11600K + Core i9 11900K Linux review from yesterday with 22 pages of benchmarks, even more performance data is now published and continues to flow in via OpenBenchmarking.org for looking at the Intel Rocket Lake performance across hundreds of benchmarks and compared to many other processors we have tested and that of the community.

31 March 2021 - Rocket Lake Benchmarks - 4 Comments
Intel's Bus Lock Detection Might Be Ready For The Mainline Linux Kernel

For longer than the past year Intel engineers have been working on wiring up the Linux kernel support to handle split lock detection and bus lock detection. Back in Linux 5.7 the split lock detection landed for warning or even killing the offending software should a split lock occur due to the significant performance impact and possible denial of service. Now it's looking like the bus lock detection code could be ready for mainline.

30 March 2021 - Bus Lock Detection - 1 Comment
Intel GNA Linux Driver Updated For Accelerating Speech Recognition, Noise Reduction

While Intel is well known and loved for their generally very timely open-source hardware enablement under Linux, occasionally there are exceptions to that long-standing tradition of having the support squared away ahead of product launches. One of the areas where Intel has been slow at enabling their open-source Linux support is around their Gaussian and Neural Accelerator (GNA) but that driver is now coming together for being mainlined hopefully in the near future.

25 March 2021 - Intel GNA - 2 Comments
Crocus: Working On Gallium3D For Old Intel Graphics

Raised during the recent discussion over looking at removing Mesa's classic drivers from the mainline tree this year is that there still exists an effort trying to create an Intel Gallium3D driver for older pre-Broadwell graphics currently only served by the i965 classic driver. That Crocus effort continues to be worked on but isn't yet mainline.

24 March 2021 - Crocus - 41 Comments
Intel Tweaking Ice Lake Xeon Linux Power Management Code For Higher C6 Latency

While Intel upstreamed their forthcoming "Ice Lake" Xeon processor support long ago and has been focused on next-gen Sapphire Rapids enablement now for the better part of the past year, there still are some Ice Lake Xeon tweaks taking place here and there. This week a new bleeding-edge patch is in testing for tweaking the power/performance behavior of Ice Lake Xeon with Intel's idle driver.

19 March 2021 - Ice Lake Xeon - Add A Comment
Intel Alder Lake P Media Driver Support Published

This week marked Intel sending out initial Linux driver enablement patches for Alder Lake P mobile support to complement the existing Alder Lake S desktop support that has been coming together in recent months. In addition to the Linux kernel code for ADL-P, the Intel open-source Media Driver code was also updated for video acceleration on this Intel hybrid chip.

14 March 2021 - Alder Lake P - Add A Comment
Intel Sends Out New Linux Driver Patches For "XE_LPD" v13 Display Hardware

Intel sent out their latest open-source Linux driver patches today for their new "XE_LPD" display architecture that will be found with upcoming hardware platforms. XE_LPD features "version 13" display capabilities but not to be confused with "Gen13" graphics as they are beginning to more segregate their different Intel GPU IP blocks.

11 March 2021 - XE_LPD Display13 - Add A Comment
Intel's Lightning Mountain Appears Punted Off Or Canned As Part Of MaxLinear Acquisition

Back in 2019 we reported on Intel bringing up a new SoC dubbed "Lighting Mountain" to be used as a network processor and for other use-cases. Intel brought up that initial Linux kernel code for Lightning Mountain in 2019 but since then the code has already begun to fall into disrepair while it looks like it was either punted off as part of MaxLinear's acquisition last year of the Intel Home Gateway Platform Division or otherwise as a result of that was cancelled.

10 March 2021 - Lighting Mountain - 1 Comment
Researchers Discover Intel CPU Ring Interconnects Vulnerable To Side Channel Attack

University of Illinois researchers have discovered that Intel's CPU ring interconnects are vulnerable to exploit by side-channel attacks. This opens a whole new can of worms with the cross-core interconnect now being vulnerable to exploit but so far Intel doesn't appear to be overly concerned and there are some open questions on whether this interconnect exploit would still work with the latest Intel Xeon processors.

8 March 2021 - Lord of the Ring(s) - 18 Comments

2916 Intel news articles published on Phoronix.