DRM Scheduler Patches Updated That Clear The Path For Merging Intel's Xe Driver

Intel Arc Graphics customers have been eager to see the new Xe DRM kernel driver merged as a modern alternative to the long-standing i915 Direct Rendering Manager driver. The Xe driver should allow for better performance, is focused just on recent Intel graphics hardware, makes use of modern kernel features, and will allow for new features such as around the Vulkan sparse support. One of the blockers for getting the Xe driver merged at least in experimental form is getting the necessary DRM scheduler changes merged.

Intel engineer Matthew Brost sent out the second revision today of the DRM scheduler changes that are needed to merge as a prerequisite to the new Intel DRM driver. The hope is these scheduler patches are now in good enough shape for a full code review and "hopefully in a state which can be merged in the near future."

However, given the timing of these patches unless there is an extremely speedy review, it's likely too late to come for Linux 6.6 now that we are hitting the Linux 6.5-rc6 point this weekend. In which case it's likely more plausible to be merged for the v6.7 kernel if indeed the changes are now in good shape for merging.

Those interested can find the new DRM scheduler patches here. Previously there's been some communication around desiring to hopefully get the Xe DRM driver merged by the end of 2023 at least as an opt-in feature... We'll see if that happens which would be for the v6.7 or v6.8 kernel cycles.