Intel Arrow Lake Enablement For Linux Looking To Get Underway

While for many months now Intel's open-source driver engineers have been busy getting Meteor Lake Linux support squared away and there has even been some Lunar Lake activity for the Linux kernel going back to 2021, it looks now like their Arrow Lake enablement will be getting underway.

Arrow Lake is the planned successor to Meteor Lake that comes before Lunar Lake on the client side. Now with the Meteor Lake graphics and other open-source driver support largely coming together ahead of the launch later this year, it looks like Arrow Lake work will quickly take focus. For many areas, it's simply a matter of adding new IDs for Arrow Lake.

While there's been the Lunar Lake support added to the e1000e network driver two years ago and the Lunar Lake M family ID added to the kernel since earlier this year, to date there hasn't been any code added to the kernel referencing Arrow Lake.

But that's about to change today with this patch being sent in to Linux 6.3 as part of the x86/urgent "fixes" for the week. The patch adds in the new Arrow Lake model number (0xC6).

It's just a one-liner with the new ID but important for future patches to come that are checking for the Arrow Lake model for ensuring the right driver code path. In turn for Linux 6.4+ we'll likely see more of the meaty Intel Arrow Lake enablement work to begin.

Intel Arrow Lake processors are expected to launch in 2024 but whether H1 or H2 is still open to rumors given the different rumors around the state of Meteor Lake S desktop processors. In any event expect more Linux driver work to begin soon around Arrow Lake especially with the Meteor Lake driver support largely all upstreamed ahead of launch. One of the last major obstacles is waiting to see the Intel i915 driver declare the Meteor Lake integrated graphics support as stable / not behind the experimental feature flag.