Intel's Compute Runtime To Default To Disabling Gen11 & Older Support On Windows
This new Compute Runtime update adds support for the Level Zero ze_device_memory_ext_properties_t extension for revealing more memory properties. The second and only other listed change is changing around the Gen9 to Gen11 support flags.
Rather surprisingly, this "update gen9 and gen11 support flags" is now defaulting the Gen8/Gen9/Gen11 graphics hardware support to be disabled on new Windows builds.
The SUPPORT_GEN8 / SUPPORT_GEN9 / SUPPORT_GEN11 flags with the Windows CMake build is now set to be disabled by default. Keep in mind this is only in relation to the Compute Runtime and not the Intel Windows graphics driver support at large. But still coming somewhat rather surprising... Well, Gen8 Broadwell disabling is not surprising, but considering how common Skylake era Gen9 graphics have been and still found in widespread use today. And then Gen11 Ice Lake graphics set to be disabled by default in new Compute-Runtime builds comes as surprising since they aren't that old. But then this just leaves Tiger Lake Gen12 graphics and newer through their discrete Arc Graphics for dealing with by the Compute-Runtime stack officially on Windows so does clean-up/ease their development and testing burden.
At this point the support flags aren't adjusted for Linux and Windows users can always override these CMake options if building the compute stack yourself. Those on Broadwell through Ice Lake and making use of the Compute Runtime stack for OpenCL or L0 can continue using existing CR builds as well. But with Intel now defaulting them to off, it does raise the question of how much maintenance/testing there will be for Gen11 and older moving forward with the compute stack and ultimately may suffer from bit rot.
This Intel Compute-Runtime pre-release can be found on GitHub.
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