Mesa 24.1 Enables Intel Xe Kernel Driver Support By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa 24.1 Enables Intel Xe Kernel Driver Support By Default

While the new Intel Xe kernel graphics driver was upstreamed in Linux 6.8 as this modern DRM driver that is opt-in for current generation hardware and aims to be the default for Lunar Lake / Xe2, currently with Mesa you must build the Intel ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D driver code with the "intel-xe-kmd" option to enable compatibility for this alternative kernel driver to i915. With Mesa 24.1 coming next quarter, that Intel Xe kernel driver support will be enabled out-of-the-box...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Xe-KMD-Mesa-24.1-Default

[RejectModernity]

Now Intel has to enable HuC support by default

[ResponseWriter]

I find it hard to keep track of random names instead of some kind of incremented number/letter as per Zen, but am I right that my Alder Lake chip can utilise this? If so, for what advantage?

[dlq84]

I find it hard to keep track of random names instead of some kind of incremented number/letter as per Zen, but am I right that my Alder Lake chip can utilise this? If so, for what advantage?

If you prefer numbers, why are you calling it Alder Lake rather than 12000 series, or 12th gen?

And yes, you will be able to use the new Xe driver. I think it's too early to tell what the advantage will be, but the code base is created from scratch and hopefully that means greater performance in the future.

[ssokolow]

If you prefer numbers, why are you calling it Alder Lake rather than 12000 series, or 12th gen?

Probably because Intel doesn't exactly make it easy to find a number that you have confidence in both being correct (Is this 12th gen?) and monotonically incrementing. (What does 12xxxx mean? Is this like when GPU manufacturers randomly reset their numbering schemes?)

[Quackdoc]

I recentlu fixed my issue with unloading i915 and binding to another driver, but I also recently started using intel fulltime and only using the amd gpu for specific tasks, so that kinda sucks. well for perf testing thats still not too bad

[ResponseWriter]

If you prefer numbers, why are you calling it Alder Lake rather than 12000 series, or 12th gen?

Because the article only mentions the name without any indication of the relevant numbers:

This doesn't change the fact that the Intel Xe driver is opt-in for supported Intel graphics hardware (Tiger Lake and newer) but just means that if/when you do switch over to the Xe kernel driver, Mesa 24.1+ will jive just fine without having to worry about rebuilding Mesa or taking any extra steps.

And simply going by those numbers my chip could be mistaken for 1st gen, being a 1240P, except that I know otherwise. Still, I haven't noticed any problems with the GPU on this device so I doubt it'll have any noticeable impact for me, but certainly any performance or power saving would be welcome.

[lyamc]

Perfect timing, I just gave up trying to build mesa, which required some llvm git, which required specific pulls to build, which required....