Intel Driver Update Fixes Performance Regressions

Chris Wilson of Intel OTC has released yet another X.Org driver update in the xf86-video-intel 2.20 series. This latest DDX update does bring rendering improvements plus fixes for various performance regressions.

The 2.20.18 release announcement for this new driver reads, "A bunch of miscellaneous fixes for assertion failures and various performance regressions when mixing new methods for offloads, along with a couple of improvements for rendering with gen4."

Among the notable work is removing use of unnormalized texture coordinates on Intel Gen4/Gen5 hardware, removing the use of x86 Assembly code during cross-building to unsupported architectures, applying damage around PRIME updates in the correct order, correctly reading the backlight level when the user overrides UXA's backlight controller choice, and throttling UXA.

Chris Wilson continues to command the development of the xf86-video-intel driver with him being responsible for 98 changes in this latest 2.20.x point release while there were just a couple developers with a small handful of other changes. Most of Wilson's work on the Intel X.Org driver continues to be around bettering SNA, the new acceleration architecture that tends to be much faster than UXA.