Intel Issues Big Updates To Their Compute-Runtime & IGC Compiler

Intel's open-source Compute-Runtime stack for OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero support along with the Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) had been on a rhythm of typically seeing new tagged releases every week or two... Quite nice and living up to the open-source development philosophy of "release early, release often." That persisted for a long time until Q4'22 when the releases became less frequent. In early December though the release train stopped and not until this morning has there been a new release of the Compute-Runtime and IGC.

After a nearly three month hiatus, new versions of the Intel Graphics Compiler and Compute-Runtime were tagged today as the latest official releases for these open-source Linux GPU compute components for both Intel's integrated graphics hardware as well as their newer discrete graphics with Arc Graphics and the Data Center GPU Max Series.

IGC 1.0.12812.24 is their new graphics compiler release, the first since 5 December. But compared to the point since the tagging, there have already been 640 more commits to master since this release. While under Windows IGC is now used by their graphics driver stack, on Linux right now IGC continues to just be used by their compute stack and hasn't yet seen any integration with their Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers. The only change listed with this new release is switching their CTNI interface to using ZEBinary.

Also tagged at the same time was Compute-Runtime 22.49.25018.24 for shipping their newest OpenCL and Level Zero code. This compute stack continues providing OpenCL 3.0 and Level Zero 1.3 support from old Gen8 Broadwell graphics up through the latest generation integrated graphics and DG2/Alchemist class dGPUs. The Compute-Runtime also continues to be tested on Microsoft's WSL in addition to bare metal Linux.

There is no concise change-log for the updated Compute-Runtime 22.49.25018.24 release but is comprised of more than 400 commits since the prior release in early December, so there is a lot in store.

Now having these new releases out there, it should be an interesting time for a fresh look at the Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 OpenCL/L0 performance on Linux.

Update: Moving forward they are moving to a monthly release cadence while this initial release took longer with the fundamental change in their releases.