Intel Posts SVM Patches For Xe Kernel Graphics Driver

Intel's new Xe kernel graphics driver is set for merging into Linux 6.8 as an experimental option. While it's being added to the next kernel cycle, it's not yet used by default for any existing Intel GPUs and its features have yet to be fully implemented and the performance has yet to be fully optimized. Among the features currently missing is Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support but a patch series posted today aims to address that functionality.

Intel engineer Oak Zeng posted a patch series for providing basic Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support for the Xe kernel driver. SVM support allows for a shared virtual address space between CPU and GPU programs. SVM is important for OpenCL and other GPU compute purposes.

The Xe SVM support is built atop the Linux kernel's Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) functionality. This new SVM code is too late to appear in the upcoming v6.8 cycle with the Xe driver debut but we'll see how it evolves and if this feature is primed in time for v6.9 in the spring.

This patch series has the initial Shared Virtual Memory enablement for the Xe kernel mode driver while future patches will address additional SVM functionality.

More broadly on the matter of the Xe kernel driver in Linux 6.8, I'll have some i915 vs. Xe Arc Graphics benchmarks on Phoronix in the coming days but long story short for its initial debut the new driver is mostly under-performing against the mature i915 driver at this stage.