Intel Begins Open-Source Graphics Driver Preparations For Meteor Lake

In addition to Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers being very busy rounding out their DG2/Alchemist enablement patches, beginning to mainline "Ponte Vecchio" work starting with Linux 5.20, and having already done the bit of enablement for Raptor Lake graphics that is predominantly based on existing Alder Lake, they have also started their Meteor Lake bring-up.

Meteor Lake is Intel's successor to Raptor Lake. While Meteor Lake isn't expected before late 2023, Intel's long-standing traditions of timely Linux bring-up for their processors and integrated graphics continues. It's not uncommon seeing this work getting underway a year or more before the planned hardware debut to accommodate getting all of the necessary bits into place ahead of launch with the different upstream/review procedures, different release cycles, and to ensure they are in released components (Linux kernel, Mesa, etc) in prominent Linux distributions in time for launch.

We've already seen Intel engineers posting various Meteor Lake patches when it comes to the Linux kernel support for networking and other areas, some Coreboot work around Meteor Lake, and more. Now it seems to also be in the early stages of graphics driver enablement for the Meteor Lake graphics.

What we've seen so far is the open-source Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) that is now used by both Windows and Linux land the virtual ISA target for Meteor Lake. As of last night the Meteor Lake "MTL" vISA target was merged into the IGC compiler code. At this stage the Meteor Lake target is largely following the same paths as DG2/Alchemist and in some cases the same as Alder Lake. Meteor Lake is being treated as the "Xe HPG" platform rather than "Xe" with Tiger Lake / Alder Lake / Raptor Lake, so presumably will have similar functionality to the forthcoming discrete Arc Graphics GPUs working their way to market.

But this is just the very tip of the iceberg for the Meteor Lake enablement with the juicier Mesa and Linux kernel i915 DRM patches yet to be posted. But with the IGC work now creeping out, the Mesa and kernel patches are likely not far behind. So if all goes well 14th Gen Core "Meteor Lake" will be yet another Intel consumer CPU launch seeing timely, well-rounded Linux support coming together well ahead of the product debut next year.