Intel News Archives

While Intel is normally very punctual with their Linux hardware support and ensure that the full capabilities of the hardware are exposed under Linux, especially when it comes to server and workstation hardware, occasionally oversights are made.

Longtime Linux users still likely cringe when hearing "Poulsbo" as Intel's first-generation Atom processors that featured "GMA 500" graphics that were based on Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX IP. The Linux driver support was just awful and now as we prepare for 2021 the Intel Linux kernel driver might just drop its 2D acceleration support for Poulsbo and the short-lived Moorestown platform.

Coming as a late addition to the Linux 5.10 kernel is Thunderbolt support for Tiger Lake H.

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers have begun preparing support for a new feature previously not talked about publicly: Intel PXP or the "Protected Xe Path".

Just a day after the CXL 2.0 specification was published, the initial Linux kernel support for this updated Compute Express Link revision was sent out for review.

Intel on Tuesday evening released their 20201110 CPU microcode package as their first collection of updated CPU microcode binaries since June and it's a big update.

As part of Intel's monthly security disclosures the company is today releasing forty new security advisories today.

Intel is contributing a new driver to the Linux kernel for determining whether Thunderbolt / USB4 ports are functional.

Currently when directly assigning I/O devices to virtual machines the guest memory needs to be statically pinned unless using a vIOMMU setup in which case it does not but there are performance implications there as well. Intel engineers though have been working on a virtual IOMMU implementation with DMA buffer tracking to overcome these limitations.

Intel didn't manage to get their Software Guard Extensions (SGX) support merged for the current Linux 5.10 LTS kernel cycle and it's still up in the air if it will be pulled in the near-term for providing the mainline kernel with SGX enclaves support.

For the past several months there have been a number of Intel Linux DRM patch series around "big joiner" support and that is looking like it may soon be finished up for allowing support for driving 8K displays off a single port.

There's still more than one month to go until the Linux 5.11 merge window kicks off but Intel open-source developers have already submitted their initial batch of kernel graphics driver updates to DRM-Next.

Given Intel's very fresh Tiger Lake platform, our latest benchmarking with the Core i7-1165G7 within the Dell XPS 9310 is seeing if running the in-development Linux 5.10 kernel means any performance or power changes for this latest-generation Intel mobile CPU with Xe/Gen12 graphics.

While Linux 5.10-rc2 is coming later today and a week past the merge window, a notable late pull request sent in this morning by Greg Kroah-Hartman is removing the Intel MIC (Many Integrated Core) architecture drivers, a.k.a. Xeon Phi.

Earlier this year the Linux kernel landed split lock detection for being able to detect and optionally kill processes leading to a split lock since it can cause measurable performance issues and even possible unprivileged denial of service.

Intel Compute-Runtime 20.43.18277 is out this morning as the latest version of the company's open-source graphics compute stack for HD/UHD/Iris/Xe Graphics on Linux with OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero support.

While 11th Gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors aren't expected to be released until the end of Q1'2021, given the interest building around AMD Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" processors, Intel revealed a few more details today about their next-generation wares.

Earlier this year was the surprising move of Intel's oneDNN neural network library adding AArch64 support and that was then complemented by adding IBM POWER support to this neural network library that is part of their oneAPI collection. Now with the latest oneDNN 2.0 beta they have furthered the support and performance for non-Intel hardware.

Intel's open-source developers have begun publishing their patches enabling their "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver to support Vulkan ray-tracing! This is in preparation for next year's Xe HPG graphics card that will feature hardware-accelerated ray-tracing.

This past week Intel began adding Alder Lake support to their Linux graphics driver and that also continued on the compute side with the Intel Compute-Runtime receiving initial support for Alder Lake S "ADLS" too.

Going back more than a year there have been Intel "i915" kernel graphics driver patches implementing integer mode scaling support while finally for Linux 5.11 in early 2021 the support will have landed.

For months now Intel's open-source Linux driver stack has been preparing for VRR support with Gen11/Gen12 graphics. We've seen user-space patches by Intel around VRR while now they are finally sending out their key Linux kernel driver patches with the i915 DRM code.

While the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) on Windows allows for undervolting laptop processors, currently on Linux there isn't any Intel-endorsed way for undervolting your CPU should you be interested in better thermal/power efficiency and other factors. But a hypothetical Linux kernel driver could be coming for filling such void.

Intel has begun adding support for Alderlake-S to their open-source Linux kernel graphics driver.

It was just on Monday that Intel's talented open-source developers merged a hefty Tiger Lake graphics optimization into the Mesa 20.3 code that for some games/software can be around ~11% faster thanks to greater caching. Just a day later another optimization has arrived for helping these latest-generation Intel graphics.

From my Tiger Lake testing so far with the Core i7 1165G7, the "Gen12" Xe Graphics have been quite compelling with a very nice upgrade over Gen11 and especially obvious win over the very common still Gen9 graphics. With Mesa 20.3, another measurable performance is on the way for the Intel Vulkan driver with Tiger Lake.

Earlier this year Linux 5.6 brought initial USB4 support by leveraging Intel's existing Thunderbolt kernel support for which the updated USB specification is based. Succeeding kernels have continued maturing this USB4 implementation and that has continued with Linux 5.10.

Intel issued a notable open-source Compute Runtime stack update today that provides OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero support for the company's graphics processors from Xe/Gen12 graphics back through Gen8 Broadwell hardware.

Given that Intel never shipped a production "Cannon Lake" CPU with its Gen10 graphics enabled, Intel's open-source driver developers have finally removed all Gen10-specific code from their Linux OpenGL/Vulkan drivers in Mesa.

Intel today is revealing a few details concerning upcoming Intel 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake" processors.

Following this month's Intel programming reference manual update disclosing a number of new instruction set extensions, Intel's compiler engineers have gone public with patches for implementing some of these forthcoming CPU features.

Intel engineers continue working on "Protection Keys for Supervisor" support for the Linux kernel as a feature coming to a future generation of processors (presumably Sapphire Rapids). The initial users of this PKS support will be helping to protect persistent memory as well as adding safeguards to Trusted Keys within the Linux kernel.

Just over one week ago Intel released the Media Driver 2020.3 with Gen12/Xe AV1 decode and other improvements for their quarterly feature release of this open-source video acceleration driver. They have also now released their adjoining Media SDK 20.3 open-source update.

Intel's next Compute Runtime release is going to be exciting as OpenCL 3.0 will be enabled for all graphics hardware found going back to Broadwell CPUs.

Expected with next year's Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs is the Intel DSA as the Data Streaming Accelerator for high performance data movement and transformation operations. Since the end of 2019 there have been Linux patches surfacing for bringing up the DSA support and now as we roll into 2021 the Linux kernel looks to begin making use of the new capabilities.

Ready to move past the tumultuous year that is 2020, Intel's open-source developers responsible for the OpenVINO toolkit today issued version 2021.1 with some big ticket additions.

Last week open-source developers at Intel began sending out Linux patches for supporting hybrid CPUs particularly ahead of 12th Gen "Alder Lake" coming to market with a mix of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores. Following that article last week, more patches hit the list in exposing the hybrid CPU topology to user-space.

Due to DXVK recently beginning to require Vulkan Transform Feedback (VK_EXT_transform_feedback) for this Direct3D translation layer popular with Linux gamers, Intel open-source developers have gone back and now implemented transform feedback support in the Intel "ANV" driver for Haswell era "Gen 7" graphics.

Presumably with Xe-HP in mind, Intel engineers continue working on adding DMA-BUF support to the Linux kernel's RDMA code.

The first patchwork is building up for Intel's "Meteor Lake" on Linux.

Intel updated their programming reference manual this week with some interesting new additions, primarily around user interrupts and the enhanced hardware feedback interface.

Intel engineers today sent out their initial Linux kernel patches for bringing up the company's forthcoming hybrid architecture processors.

Following the announcement this summer of Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) as an exciting feature coming to Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs next year, Intel's open-source engineers quickly began with patches to LLVM and GNU toolchain support for AMX. Now Intel engineers have sent out their patches in preparing the Linux kernel for AMX.

Following yesterday's release of the finalized OpenCL 3.0 specification, open-source Intel developers have released OpenCL Intercept Layer 3.0.

Just in time for the end of the quarter Intel's open-source multimedia team has released the Media Driver 2020.3 package for the Intel graphics accelerated media encode/decode component on Linux platforms.

The sixth spin of Intel DG1 discrete graphics card patches have now been sent out for review, amounting to just about 700 lines of new driver code due to building off the existing DG1 work and more broadly the Gen12/Xe support that's been refined in mainline for months. With these patches it would appear the Intel DG1 is then in good shape under Linux but due to the timing is unlikely to be mainlined until a stable kernel release in early 2021.

Last week on the GNU toolchain side was initial work on supporting Intel Key Locker while this week Key Locker support has come to LLVM.

Intel's compiler experts in Moscow have been working on OpenCL C 3.0 support for the LLVM Clang compiler front-end.

Patches sent out on Friday provide an initial DP-HDMI2.1 PCON implementation for the Intel Linux kernel graphics driver.

Intel continues bringing up the DG1 discrete graphics card under Linux with continued refinements set to hit for Linux 5.10.