Planning Intel's Next Driver Release

The xf86-video-intel 2.4.0 driver was released last week with support for GMA 4-Series Support, EXA Render improvements, and other enhancements. Now planning is already underway for the next driver release, version 2.5.0. Jesse Barnes is serving as the release manager for xf86-video-intel 2.5 and so far he has planned the following changes:

- Usable EXA support
- Support for GEM
- Support for Kernel-based Mode-Setting
- No more tearing from XvMC or X-Video
- Bug fixes
- Dropping XAA support

The usable EXA support is coming due to performance improvements made with EXA that now place it ahead of XAA for 2D acceleration with Intel graphics. With that said, Jesse Barnes plans to drop XAA acceleration completely with this next release due to bugs, missing features, and EXA being the superior acceleration method.

Once Intel's Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) is supported in the Linux kernel as the graphics memory manager, it will become the default within the xf86-video-intel driver. There is fall-back support, however, for users without GEM support.

Kernel-based mode-setting is planned for this next driver release and KMS is planned for integration with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel.

Video tearing for X-Video and X-Video Motion Compensation will hopefully be fixed in this next release due to improvements with Mesa and Intel making their Xv/XvMC code smarter. Other bug-fixes are also planned.

The xf86-video-intel 2.5.0 planning message can be read on the X.Org mailing list. The first release candidate for the xf86-video-intel driver will hopefully be ready within a few weeks.