Intel Pushes Ivy Bridge Code Into Mesa Master

After releasing open-source Ivy Bridge code last month for the Linux kernel to go in Intel's DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver for graphics acceleration and kernel mode-setting, Intel then landed Ivy Bridge support in their X.Org driver although that isn't too interesting with most of the exciting code these days happening in the Linux kernel or Mesa library. Yesterday, however, the final big piece of the Linux support for Ivy Bridge was pushed out there: the Mesa 3D support.

Being tacked on to Intel's classic Mesa i965 DRI driver, alongside the Sandy Bridge "Gen 6" support is the initial code for bringing up Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge hardware. All of the code commits can be seen from the Mesa Git repository. The Ivy Bridge "Gen 7" support is sprinkled across a great number of commits, but will officially be released as part of Mesa 7.11 in the next month or two.

Intel still hasn't adopted any Gallium3D driver for their hardware and the unofficial Intel Gallium3D driver is obviously not yet compatible with Sandy Bridge let alone Ivy Bridge.

Ivy Bridge is the succeeding processor to Sandy Bridge with even better integrated graphics and will be released by year's end. This initial Ivy Bridge Mesa code has five PCI IDs with two being for desktop systems, two for mobile, and one server part.

The key Linux requirements when seeing Sandy Bridge hardware in the future is looking to be the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, Mesa 7.11, and xf86-video-intel 2.16, while the open-source Linux support should continue to be refined in the coming releases. The initial Ivy Bridge support has been referred to by one Intel developer as being "kick ass", so it should be good times once the hardware is shipping.