Intel's Initial Graphics Updates For Linux 5.11: More DG1, Integer Scaling, Async Flips

There's still more than one month to go until the Linux 5.11 merge window kicks off but Intel open-source developers have already submitted their initial batch of kernel graphics driver updates to DRM-Next.

For this next kernel cycle that will also mark being the first stable Linux kernel update of 2021, Intel has a lot of exciting open-source graphics updates. There continues to be a lot of enablement work around their discrete graphics efforts (currently, DG1), integer scaling support for helping pixel art games and similar content, and enabling asynchronous page flipping at long last for Intel Gen9 graphics and newer.

The async page flipping is long overdue for the Intel kernel graphics driver but it's great to see it finally merged after several rounds of code review. Async page flipping allows for improving the Intel Linux gaming performance. Async flips help where the full-screen game/application is running at the native screen resolution in which case an extra blit per frame prior to the page-flip can be avoided. I'll be running some benchmarks of the Intel async page flipping support shortly. This async flipping work has been in the works for quite a while and nice to see this functionality finally land.

The DG1 changes so far for Linux 5.11 are quite scattered throughout and range from adding more PCI IDs to power well handling to DPLL to various workarounds.

Also worth mentioning with this pull are other Gen12/Xe graphics updates, better reboot/shutdown display handling, and many fixes.

More details on this initial i915 DRM pull request to DRM-Next ahead of Linux 5.11 via this mailing list post. Expect a few more Intel pull requests to come over the next few weeks of more new material to make this next kernel cycle.