Intel Sends Out Initial Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Support For Tiger Lake
In recent weeks we have seen Intel Linux developers beginning to volley their initial Tiger Lake enablement code across different kernel subsystems and compiler support. This week though are the bits that excite us the most: the Intel graphics support.
The basic enablement was sent out for Tiger Lake, their second-generation 10nm processor to ultimately succeed Icelake potentially as early as 2020 with a Willow Cove CPU, Xe GPU, and updated display technology. While Tiger Lake is said to have their initial "Xe GPU", so far the Tiger Lake Linux driver bits are relatively minor on top of their existing i915 DRM driver with just dozens of patches measuring in just around one thousand lines of code altered. Additionally, one of their patches explicitly states, "Tiger Lake is a Intel® Processor containing Intel® HD Graphics." They do say there is "more to come soon", so we'll see just how different it ends up being from the promising Icelake "Gen 11" graphics.
The code published so far does indicate a fourth additional pipe and transcoder, clock and power management changes, a new "DC3CO" power well, and two additional USB Type-C ports (six USB Type-C ports and three combo PHY ports in total) for DP Alternate Mode / DP Thunderbolt / Native DP / native HDMI/DP. The code does reference the Tiger Lake graphics as being Gen 12 with the generational features being the additional pipe and transcoder and a modular FIA for SoCs. There are seven PCI IDs added at this point under Tiger Lake, though not indicative necessarily for the number of SKUs we'll see since often times there are reserved IDs, some IDs just for pre-production/engineering models, etc.
This initial Tiger Lake code misses the cut-off for making it into Linux 5.3 while we'll likely see this inaugural Tiger Lake Gen 12 graphics support merged for Linux 5.4 later in the year and continue to be refined over the succeeding kernel releases.
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