Intel X.Org Driver Update Gets New Features

Chris Wilson of Intel OTC announced the release of the xf86-video-intel 2.21.4 X.Org driver on Monday morning. This new driver has clumsy PowerXpress integration, run-time detection of available CPU instruction sets, Haswell fix-ups, and more work on the SNA acceleration architecture.

The notable work with the xf86-video-intel 2.21.4 driver update, which comes less than one month after the Intel 2.21.3 driver update, includes:

- Support for detection at run-time of available CPU instruction set extensions so that hand-tuned code for performance-sensitive hot code paths can be better optimized. Chris Wilson has already done hand-tuning of SSE4 and AVX code within this Intel 2D driver.

- Honoring the LinearFramebuffer with the SNA acceleration architecture for clumsy PowerXpress integration. AMD's PowerXpress has worked with the default UXA acceleration method but now it appears it should work for SNA by supporting a linear frame-buffer.

- A fix for Haswell "Crystalwell" (CRW) PCI IDs.

- Screen Pixmap recreation handling when exported via PRIME.

- Various performance fixes and optimizations for the Intel 2D acceleration.

The xf86-video-intel 2.21.4 driver update details can be found within this mailing list message.