Intel News Archives

Intel published a number of new CPU microcode images this Patch Tuesday for addressing various security issues as well as a number of functional issues being addressed across different CPU client and server processor generations.

Intel Linux graphics driver engineers today sent in their first batch of patches to DRM-Next of new material they are prepared to introduce with the upcoming Linux 6.12 kernel cycle.

Last week I wrote about a tiny Linux patch yielding up to 32% faster performance and up to 18% less energy for Emerald Rapids CPUs. That patch is an adjustment to the Intel P-State driver's Energy Performance Preference (EPP) value for that Intel Xeon Scalable family. Today that patch was merged for the Linux 6.11 kernel.

With upcoming Intel Arrow Lake H processors it's just not P cores and E cores but for the E cores will be a mix of both Skymont and Crestmont core types.

A seemingly late patch for the Intel Idle (intel_idle) Linux kernel driver enables support for upcoming Xeon 6 Granite Rapids processors.

Building off some "request for comments" patches sent out in April, a new set of patches appeared on Friday for the Intel P-State Linux driver for setting the asymmetric CPU capacity on hybrid systems. This is another attempt at helping to improve the Linux kernel scheduler behavior in ensuring optimal task placement between Intel Core processors having a mix of P and E cores. This patch series in particular helps when SMT / Hyper Threading support is disabled or like with upcoming Lunar Lake processors where there is no HT support.

A one line patch to the Linux kernel is yielding significant performance and power efficiency gains for existing Intel Xeon "Emerald Rapids" server processors on the likes of Ubuntu Linux.

The open-source Intel "ANV" Vulkan driver within Mesa is now more capable for its Vulkan Video support with the H.264 and H.265 encode support now wired up for Mesa 24.3.

Intel closed out July by publishing AVX10.2 technical details as part of a now public document. Intel's compiler engineers are also already at work on enabling AVX10.2 in the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers.

While the Linux 6.11 merge window ended just days ago, Intel engineers are already beginning to submit kernel graphics driver changes to the DRM-Next branch of material they want to get in for the Linux 6.12 cycle that will end out 2024. Notable is they are trying to wrap up the Xe2 graphics support for Lunar Lake and Battlemage discrete graphics so that the support can be exposed by default.

Last year the oneAPI Construction Kit was introduced by Intel-owned Codeplay Software for bringing SYCL to new hardware even for hardware outside of Intel's offerings. One of the early targets of this oneAPI Construction Kit support was for RISC-V processors and now with today's release of oneAPI Construction Kit 4.0 there is finally RISC-V host CPU support.

With the AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" laptops now shipping this week, Intel has announced that their Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processors as the successor to Meteor Lake will be formally launching on 3 September.

It was just two months ago that Oded Gabbay, the longtime maintainer of the Habana Labs kernel accelerator driver for Linux, announced he was stepping down from his software role and leaving Intel. Oded Gabbay was also a maintainer of the new Intel Xe kernel graphics driver. That was a surprising move with Oded Gabbay having been at Intel / Habana Labs for 7+ years and oversaw the creation of the Linux kernel's "accel" accelerator subsystem and more while prior to that having been at Red Hat and AMD. Ofir Bitton was named the Habana Labs driver maintainer following that but now he announced he too is leaving Intel.

Intel is kicking off the new week with a new release to their open-source Compute Runtime stack that provides OpenCL and Level Zero support across Windows and Linux systems with Intel integrated/discrete graphics.

The open-source software pieces have come together where Fedora / Red Hat developers are hoping that for Fedora 41 there can be out-of-the-box support for the web cameras on newer Intel laptops.

Intel today released IGC 1.0.17193.4 as the newest version of the Intel Graphics Compiler that is used for their compute stack on Windows/Linux as well as by their Windows graphics driver for shader compilation.

Intel's OSPRay ray-tracing engine as part of their oneAPI rendering toolkit continues to serve as a great, scalable and portable RT engine for high fidelity visualizations. With OSPRay 3.2 released today, they continue advancing this open-source engine further.

Ahead of launch for new discrete/integrated graphics backed by open-source Linux drivers, it can often be difficult to ascertain the level of support pre-launch given the complexity of today's GPUs, we are past the days of long monolithic patch series for new hardware enablement, and also not knowing about what features may be added for the next-generation hardware. But if latest Mesa developer comments hold, it looks like for Intel Xe2 graphics the open-source Vulkan driver at least has "most" of the code now in place.

All of the "perf" performance events feature updates were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.11 merge window.

Intel's oneAPI Video Processing Library (VPL) GPU Runtime 2024Q2 release is now available along with an updated quarterly release of the Intel Media Driver.

The Intel-initiated Sound Open Firmware project for open-source audio DSP firmware and related tooling is out with a new v2.10 release. SOF continues to be backed not only by Intel but also Google, AMD, Realtek, NXK, Mediatek, and other organizations.

Intel engineers have been busy preparing their open-source Linux software stack for H.266/VVC video decoding that is expected with upcoming Xe2 graphics for Lunar Lake and Battlemage. FFmpeg 2024Q2 is out today with VVC decoding now working on Intel graphics for this widely-used multimedia library.

For the past year and a half Intel engineers have been working on Linux kernel improvements for Sub-NUMA Clustering (SNC) in the presence of Resource Director Technology (RDT). Intel has been advising its customers not to use Sub-NUMA Clustering when making use of Resource Director Technology since these features would effectively fight eachother. Well, with the Linux 6.11 kernel that's finally being addressed.

A patch posted for the Intel i915 kernel graphics driver finally allows for fan speed reporting with Arc Graphics and other Intel discrete graphics cards under Linux.

Set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel cycle is Intel's "Performance Limit Reasons" reporting for indicating why a processor may be downclocking.

Back in February I wrote about Intel's open-source graphics driver engineers working on a new adaptive sharpening filter capability to be found with upcoming Xe2 graphics starting with Lunar Lake. This new adaptive sharpening filter has minimal power and performance impact and at least according to the driver engineers is working out rather well. Besides the Intel Xe kernel driver support around enabling this adaptive sharpening filter, Intel has also been readying the rest of the Linux desktop stack for exposing this capability.

Both the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers today saw support for Intel's Branch Hint extension merged today for this feature of Redwood Cove P cores as found with current generation Meteor Lake processors as well as upcoming Intel Granite Rapids server processors.

The latest Linux kernel enablement work for upcoming Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors is perf subsystem support.

Intel's IDXD driver is what enables the Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) under Linux as found since Sapphire Rapids as part of Intel's accelerator offerings on their Xeon processors. With patches posted today, the IDXD driver will help the hardware recover in case of errors to provide a more robust experience.

The Intel kernel graphics driver code being queued for the Linux 6.11 kernel already has added the initial Intel Battlemage PCI IDs, Battlemage display support, eDP Panel Replay support, Hardware Replay to help with hang debugging, SR-IOV preparations, and more Lunar Lake / Xe2 enablement. Today another unexpected last minute pull request was submitted of a bit more Xe driver code.

Intel engineers today released version 2.22 of libva, the driver-agnostic library for the Video Acceleration API (VA-API). Most notable with libva 2.22 is adding a new interface for Versatile Video Coding (VVC / H.266).

On top of already having queued Intel Battlemage display support and the Battlemage device PCI IDs and other Intel kernel graphics driver features like hardware hang replays, Intel engineers today sent out another batch of "drm-intel-next" material slated for introduction in the upcoming Linux 6.11 cycle.

Sent in as the sole patch for this week's Linux power management subsystem updates is an important fix for Intel Core hybrid systems with buggy firmware. The Intel P-State driver fix can address as much as a 50% performance hit seen with existing Linux kernel versions on affected Intel hybrid platforms.

Sent out on Wednesday were the latest set of DRM-Xe-Next changes of the last round of feature updates for this Xe kernel graphics driver targeting the upcoming Linux 6.11 cycle.

Upcoming Intel Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" processors will support a new Structural Based Functional Test at Field (SBAF) testing capability to help verify the health of the CPU cores.

Intel today issued the Compute Runtime 24.22.29735.20 release as their open-source driver providing OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero capabilities on Windows and Linux systems. This update was joined by an updated Intel Graphics Compiler, IGC 1.0.16900.23.

Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers continue to be quite busy in preparing for the Xe2 next-generation graphics to be found with forthcoming Lunar Lake processors and the Battlemage discrete graphics cards.

The open-source Intel ANV Vulkan driver has recently been seeing improvements around better handling the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver.

A new set of patches are currently being tested for improving task scheduling and in turn performance for modern Intel Core hybrid processors. With the patch also mentioning systems that are hybrid but without SMT, this looks like it may be some early tuning as well for upcoming Intel Lunar Lake processors that lack Hyper Threading.

Intel software engineers have been upstreaming the Lunar Lake support for Linux a number of months already and the basics appear in good shape, aside from the Xe2 graphics enablement being an ongoing matter. Much of the rest of the core functionality has appeared to be in good shape ahead of Lunar Lake laptops launching in Q3, but it seems there have been a few missing power management related bits.

The Intel Xe driver is working on supporting PMT functionality with a new set of patches that may be mainlined for Linux v6.11~6.12.

Intel on Wednesday released version 1.5 of their Linux NPU driver, their user-space driver component for Linux systems in enabling the neural processing unit found with Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors and newer. This goes along with their upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for allowing a full open-source solution for AI workloads with the likes of OpenVINO.

It was just a few months back that Intel introduced a Gaudi "2C" variant of Gaudi2 to their open-source Linux driver. This variant might be for some export model or otherwise a hyperscaler/customer-specific revision or something along those lines. Now appearing within new Habana Labs driver patches for the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel are patches for a new Gaudi 2D variant.

Building off the Xe2 foundation in place for the Lunar Lake integrated graphics, more recently Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver engineers have begun pushing out code focused on enabling the Xe2-based Battlemage discrete GPUs as the successor to the DG2/Alchemist hardware. That enablement work remains ongoing and with the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel cycle the important fundamental milestone is being crossed of actually being able to drive a connected display/monitor by a Battlemage GPU.

While it looked like all of the Intel Lunar Lake support was wrapped up with the first of these next-gen Core Ultra laptops set to debut next quarter and the Panther Lake bring-up for Linux has begun, it looks like there may be some stragglers still around Lunar Lake. Sent out today was the patch series enabling DLVR (Digital Linear Voltage Regulator) support for these upcoming mobile SoCs.

While Intel Panther Lake processors aren't expected until at least mid-2025, with Intel open-source Linux engineers already having much of the Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake support in order (the main Lunar Lake area still being ironed out is the Xe2 graphics), work is slowly beginning on upstreaming Panther Lake support.

A set of patches for the Linux kernel's Intel P-State driver aim to ensure Intel Xeon servers can hit their highest clock frequencies following changes in the server's performance profile. It turns out some special handling is needed to update the highest frequencies of a CPU after boot to ensure the performance profile is properly reflected.

Intel today released OpenVINO 2024.2, the newest version of its open-source AI toolkit for optimizing and deploying deep learning (A) inference models across a range of AI frameworks and broad hardware types.

Intel's Open Image Denoise open-source software that is a denoising library used by Blender and other applications is out with a new feature release as it prepares for the integrated graphics of upcoming Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors as well as nearing the launch of Xe2 / Battlemage discrete graphics.

Within the every increasingly complex world of CPU security mitigations, Intel engineers have submitted Linux kernel patches to begin taking into account the CPU core "hybrid" topology when determining relevant CPU security vulnerabilities and in turn the mitigations to apply.