Intel GSC Support Continues To Get Squared Away For DG2/Alchemist

While much of Intel's Arc Graphics DG2/Alchemist enablement appears to be in decent shape for Linux 5.20 with the small BAR support expected to land, the compute support being exposed to user-space in 5.19, etc, one of the few remaining pieces is the GSC support. The Intel GSC is their new Graphics System Controller found with their discrete GPU and used for security-related operations.

This weekend the sixth revision to the Intel GSC patches for enabling the controller on DG2/Alchemist and Xe HP SDV were sent out. The Intel GSC is needed for HDCP content protection, handling of firmware updates for the GPU, and related security tasks. The GSC ties into Intel's Management Engine Interface (MEI).

Obviously to Linux users not interested in playing protected content or the like, the GSC isn't particularly attractive and rubs most Linux users the wrong way. But since it's needed for handling firmware updates on the graphics card, it will have some relevance and broader use to Linux users.

Those turned off by the MEI / "security" features can always build their kernel with INTEL_MEI_GSC disabled. In any case, the DG2/Alchemist GSC support is still being worked on as shown by these Sunday v6 patches.

There are 14 v6 patches published on Sunday as the latest iteration of GSC support for Intel Xe HP SDV and DG2 platforms. This contains the necessary support additions over the original GSC code worked on for DG1.

Given the timing of these GSC patches, they aren't expected for the upcoming 5.20 cycle but won't land until at least the 6.0 cycle after that, but at least isn't critical functionality for getting DG2/Alchemist graphics going under Linux.