Intel Linux Graphics Driver To Do A Better Job Of Keeping Track Of Its Engine Busyness

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  • smitty3268
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2008
    • 6956

    #11
    Originally posted by Anux View Post
    Na that's bullshit, there is hardly any volume produced of those chips.
    ...
    Intel probably sells them at a loss or somewhere at break even.
    Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I doubt it's actually at a loss but there's no way they're making money on these cards.

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    • the-burrito-triangle
      Phoronix Member
      • Jul 2024
      • 80

      #12
      Originally posted by Espionage724 View Post
      Ew GuC

      Not directly related, but I'm still confused about firmware load on pre-Arc. dmesg reports clearly GuC/HuC firmware loading isn't supported and worded to sound like it fails with guc=3, but the sys option shows it definitely load (logs). Apparently there's something about the media driver and better encode or decode with HuC enabled (never tested it) but I'm not actively aware of any differences with it default/0 or forced/3 on UHD 630. I'm also not sure if it interfaces with Management Engine (I have it HAP bit disabled no HECI but GuC/HuC still loads; I vaguely recall one of those 3 being related to i915 PAVP too).

      Is there something obvious GuC and HuC firmware do vs not having either where it's optional?
      Enabling both Huc and GuC works for my Tigerlake and Rocket Lake first gen Xe iGPUs. Intel decided to only enable these features by default with Alder Lake and newer. That doesn't mean they can't work on older GPUs. I think there are benefits to doing so as far back as Skylake mobile iGPUs. But the kernel will say its "tainted" when enabled since Intel doesn't want to be held responsible if enabling the GuC/HuC breaks something (like suspend/resume or something else).



      Anyways, the GuC is supposed to offload portions of the kernel driver to make the GPU more performant and HuC enables low power video decoding and encoding.

      If it works for your GPU, I would enable it. But if you are one of those anti-blob people, don't and have a worse performing GPU.

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      • the-burrito-triangle
        Phoronix Member
        • Jul 2024
        • 80

        #13
        Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post

        Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I doubt it's actually at a loss but there's no way they're making money on these cards.
        Intel cannot afford to loose money on these cards. They aren't Sony with the PS5, where they will make more money off of games sold for the platform. I'm not saying Intel is raking in the profits, but they certainly are not selling at a loss.
        Last edited by the-burrito-triangle; 18 December 2024, 09:21 PM.

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        • geerge
          Senior Member
          • Aug 2023
          • 359

          #14
          Originally posted by M@GOid View Post
          I have a hard time believing they had any big stock of those things. No retailer knew how well those cards would be received, not even Intel I think, so no reason to keep a good stock of them. And who can blame them?

          Now Intel is running against the clock before Nvidia and AMD announce their new lineup in a month or so, before a good chunk of potential buyers change their minds and decide to go with the usual suspects.
          Shame the latest intel CPU's are on a different node, would have been nice if they could re-allocate the silicon meant for the 285k (which must be selling like absolute garbage) to something that would actually sell.

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          • cutterjohn
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2009
            • 333

            #15
            Originally posted by Espionage724 View Post
            Ew GuC

            Not directly related, but I'm still confused about firmware load on pre-Arc. dmesg reports clearly GuC/HuC firmware loading isn't supported and worded to sound like it fails with guc=3, but the sys option shows it definitely load (logs). Apparently there's something about the media driver and better encode or decode with HuC enabled (never tested it) but I'm not actively aware of any differences with it default/0 or forced/3 on UHD 630. I'm also not sure if it interfaces with Management Engine (I have it HAP bit disabled no HECI but GuC/HuC still loads; I vaguely recall one of those 3 being related to i915 PAVP too).

            Is there something obvious GuC and HuC firmware do vs not having either where it's optional?
            Intel opted NOT to refactor in their terms 'hacked' video encode support to the Xe driver from the i915 driver for the Alchemist series of card(and presumably any similar design iGPU) as it was too teh hard. So you get no video encode if you use the Xe driver w/alchemist, or have other broken graphics elements if you require hardware video encoding

            Presumably meaning that Battlemage forward have some 'easier' to program for hw video encoder? Or perhaps it's the memory arch, or a combo of the two(or more things)?

            So for Alchemist you get a choicing of rebooting per needs/desires switching between i915(still default AFAICT) or dual booting w/windows... Ofc most people I know still have a dedicated windows machine at least for gaming, if not for some other niche proprietary software, usually related to video and graphics production... there are also a number of scientific and engineering applications that really only run under Windows as well...

            ...and yes I know there are also people who use macs for similar video/graphic production workflows as it also support much of that niche software pretty well... I just have little recent experience w/OSX so can't really comment, and additionally I do no video editing, audio editing, or graphics work... so YMMV...

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