In early 2017 was when there was initial work underway for the Intel Linux graphics driver on a new engine reset capability for Broadwell "Gen 8" hardware and newer. This capability allows for per-engine resets rather than resorting to a full GPU reset in the case of hangs. The code at the time didn't end up being merged to the Linux kernel but there is now a revised implementation.

The new patches for engine-reset support was done by Carlos Santa of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center. The effect is still the same that in the case of hangs for a particular part of a GPU, such as the media engine, it can be reset by itself rather than resetting the whole GPU to recover from a hang. The primary motivation for this does appear to be around the media engine potentially hanging. A few months ago were more details on this GPU reset approach.

On Friday, Santa posted the new patches made it out for the Intel DRM driver. There are also some changes needed to the Intel VA-API driver for watchdog changes.

Hopefully we'll see the Direct Rendering Manager bits finally ready to go for the next Linux kernel cycle.