Intel Xe MAX Needs Two Linux Kernels For Now - Meaning You Need To Use A GPU-Accelerated VM

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Xe MAX Needs Two Linux Kernels For Now - Meaning You Need To Use A GPU-Accelerated VM

Back in October Intel announced Iris Xe MAX as discrete graphics for laptops. The overall Linux state for Xe MAX hasn't been too clear and we haven't had any hardware access to this Intel laptop discrete graphics hardware to report our own findings, but their developers have now cleared up the situation. The good news is the Xe MAX graphics can be used for a GPU-accelerated Linux virtual machine. The bad news is the Xe MAX support doesn't yet allow for dGPU usage by the host outside of a virtual machine context as it needs "two different [Linux] kernels" for operation...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Xe-MAX-dGPU-VM

[tildearrow]

Why isn't there something like DKMSize?
A tool to turn specific kernel modules on a tree into DKMS modules?

This way we don't have to compile the whole Intel kernel...

AMD did this for AMDGPU-PRO and it worked well...

[pipe13]

Lulz But at least they're Open about it.

When Intel do get this Work In Progress sorted out, the only certainty is we will hear about here first.

[vladpetric]

Honestly, I think it's ok.

Intel Xe Max is not yet a mainstream product. Once/if ever it becomes that, then we can **tch about Linux support (something that Intel has been pretty good about with past products, far better than, say, AMD).

[andrei_me]

Does this applies to the new laptops that have both Intel iGPU & dGPU? Or is just for the dGPU target towards HPC?

[Michael]

Does this applies to the new laptops that have both Intel iGPU & dGPU? Or is just for the dGPU target towards HPC?

Xe MAX (at least for now) is just about the Intel laptops with iGPU+dGPU.

[andrei_me]

Xe MAX (at least for now) is just about the Intel laptops with iGPU+dGPU.

So I'll have to go all this trouble to able to use both GPUs ?

agd5f bridgman How this is handled in AMD laptops that have both iGPU/dGPU like Dell G15 SE?

[Michael]

So I'll have to go all this trouble to able to use both GPUs ?

agd5f bridgman How this is handled in AMD laptops that have both iGPU/dGPU like Dell G15 SE?

Right, that is currently how is handled with Xe MAX on Linux.

AMD and others properly support PRIME for such configurations but for now the Intel DRM driver isn't coping well with more than one Intel graphics device.

[CochainComplex]

that sounds almost like a nvidia approach.

[agd5f]

So I'll have to go all this trouble to able to use both GPUs ?

agd5f bridgman How this is handled in AMD laptops that have both iGPU/dGPU like Dell G15 SE?

The amdgpu driver handles multiple devices. I suspect the intel driver makes assumptions about only driving a single device since until recently that was the only valid case.