The First Experience Of Intel Haswell On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Processors on 1 June 2013 at 10:01 AM EDT. Page 2 of 3. 48 Comments.

Already covered extensively on Phoronix have been many articles about Haswell on Linux. In fact, I've written 131 news postings so far about Haswell support. Going back one year there's been early Haswell support published when it comes to the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver, kernel support for the new chipsets, and compilers beginning to take advantage of new functionality.

On the CPU side, the widely used GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers have been preparing for Haswell for more than one year. GCC 4.8 and LLVM Clang 3.1/3.2 support Advanced Vector Extensions 2, FMA3, and other new instruction set extensions offered by Haswell. On the Linux kernel side, there is support and even features like SMAP have already been implemented.

On the graphics side, all of the necessary changes have landed for the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver across the kernel, libdrm, Mesa, VA-API, and xf86-video-intel. The latest stable versions have the support although using the latest development versions should yield better functionality and performance. The Haswell open-source Linux support has been maturing for over one year.

Overall, the processor support for Haswell on Linux is there, assuming you're running a modern Linux distribution. The Intel Haswell Linux support will surely continue to be tweaked and refined in the months to come.


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