A Lot More Code Pushed Out For Intel's New Iris Gallium3D Linux Graphics Driver

Last month we were the first to point out that Intel is developing a new Gallium3D graphics driver for their recent generations of HD/UHD Graphics and presumably moving forward with their discrete GPU solutions coming out in 2020. This new Intel Gallium3D driver called "Iris" continues making progress though isn't yet ready for end-users.

The Intel Gallium3D driver code activity in the public repository seems to come in spurts with overnight being the last huge pile of commits. The 40+ commits overnight included more low-level infrastructure work, adding new capabilities, various NIR intermediate representation bits, AMD_pinned_memory support, and other driver fundamentals.

The list of Iris activity can be found here. Though it's worth noting that in addition to the main iris branch are also several other Iris feature branches working on different targeted features from compute to other graphics functionality.

This TODO offers a glimpse of the early state of the driver. Right now all of the work appears targeted on bringing up current-generation Gen 9 graphics first but looks like they will go back to at least Gen 8 support on this Gallium3D driver. It will likely be several months at least before this driver enters a state where Linux gaming enthusiasts may want to give it a whirl, I'll, of course, be running benchmarks once the driver is a bit more fleshed out.

We should be learning more about the Intel Gallium3D driver effort later this month at XDC 2018 in Spain.