Intel Prepares More Arc "Alchemist" Graphics Code For Linux 5.19 + ATS-M & Raptor Lake S

Being a week out past the end of the Linux 5.18 merge window, today Intel sent out their first batch of "i915" DRM graphics driver updates to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of what will be the Linux 5.19 kernel this summer. There is a lot of code churn still happening around enabling Intel's discrete graphics hardware and other open-source driver happenings.

Ironing out DG2/Alchemist remains a priority for the open-source Intel graphics driver engineers. While it looks like the base support is there for Linux 5.17~5.18, features are still landing for Linux 5.19 and other optimizations and improvements. The support is clearly still settling down but hopefully will be in good shape by the time Intel Arc discrete graphics cards end up being generally available later this year.

This code preparations for Linux 5.19 brings continued bring-up work around DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics with forthcoming Intel Arc graphics processors. So far this cycle new code is around Tile-4 format support, new CCS clear color compression, and new render and media compression formats supported.

Also notable with this initial batch of feature changes for the Intel graphics driver in Linux 5.19 is the Arctic Sound M support, going along with the other Mesa and Media SDK support for ATS-M. Arctic Sound M is an Intel GPU data center offering focused on video transcoding, cloud gaming, and similar use-cases and will formally launch in the second half of the year.

This pull request also adds in the Raptor Lake S (RPL-S) PCI IDs. Raptor Lake S is launching later this year as the successor to Alder lake and Intel's Linux driver crew has been busy preparing for Raptor Lake not only for the graphics driver support but in other areas of the kernel too.

Other changes with today's drm-intel-next update include static DRRS support, supporting multiple eDP and LVDS native mode refresh rates, DisplayPort HDR support has been extended back to Haswell and newer, non-x86 build improvements for improving compatibility of Intel's dGPU graphics driver with Arm and other architectures, and a wide range of bug fixes and code clean-ups.

The full list of Intel graphics driver patches sent in today to DRM-Next for Linux 5.19 can be found via this pull request. Expect additional Intel i915 driver feature pulls over the next few weeks.