Intel Sends Out Initial Linux Graphics Driver Support For "Elkhart Lake"

It's busy as ever for the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver developers bringing up support for upcoming hardware like the recently published driver patches for Comet Lake, continuing to tweak the maturing Icelake "Gen 11" graphics, and also plotting the necessary re-engineering of the driver needed to bring-up Intel's in-development "Xe" discrete graphics. And Intel developers this evening sent out their initial enablement work for Elkhart Lake.

Elkhart Lake, thankfully, isn't yet another 14nm CPU revision nor based on the long-standing "Gen 9" graphics but is an Icelake offshoot. Elkhart Lake is the SoC successor to Gemini Lake that will be based on Icelake. Public details on Intel's Elkart Lake are still light, but the patches out on Wednesday confirm that it's indeed featuring Gen 11 graphics very similar to what is found in the Icelake processors.

The initial volley of Elkhart Lake Linux support are 9 patches to Intel's i915 kernel DRM driver. Patches for the rest of the Intel Linux graphics stack (namely their Mesa drivers) have yet to be published but will likely be out in short order.

The code presents just some basic differences between Elkhart Lake "EHL" and Icelake "ICL". At least for now there are just four PCI IDs for the Elkhart Lake graphics adapters: 0x4500, 0x4571, 0x4551, and 0x4541. These initial kernel bits for the Elkhart Lake SoC will likely end up being introduced into the Linux 5.2 kernel cycle this summer, still giving plenty of time for the released kernel to work its way into distributions before the SoCs debut.