One of many nice elements of Intel built-in and discrete graphics is the broad help for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV). Intel “Gen12” graphics again to Tigerlake can deal with SR-IOV when there are not any firmware woes or different points at play. There may be SR-IOV help at present with the i915 kernel driver however Intel engineers are working to architect optimum SR-IOV integration into their forthcoming Xe DRM kernel driver.
As a result of Linux kernel coverage of not breaking the user-space ABI, Intel graphics driver engineers have been taking their time crafting the brand new interfaces whereas creating the fashionable Xe driver that’s centered on Gen12 graphics and newer — each for discrete and built-in graphics. On Friday they posted their “request for feedback” plan round SR-IOV help.
With their SR-IOV help for Xe they’re planning to introduce some new sysfs interfaces for added SR-IOV attributes and make different enhancements over what’s discovered at present within the i915 DRM kernel driver. For many customers these particulars will not imply a lot apart from the refreshing reality of Intel persevering with to help SR-IOV throughout their spectrum of graphics merchandise on Linux shifting ahead.
These interested by all of the high quality technical particulars on the SR-IOV help plans for the Intel Xe Direct Rendering Supervisor driver can discover their RFC design doc on the dri-devel mailing checklist.
The Intel Xe DRM kernel driver has but to be mainlined to the Linux kernel even in experimental type, however hopefully we’ll lastly see that occur within the early months of 2024 to make it simpler for testing and analysis by lovers. The Xe driver is designed round fashionable graphics wants and kernel interfaces in comparison with i915, finally must be quicker with all of the enhancements, higher help options like sparse sources, and also will be higher supported on non-x86 kernels for these utilizing Intel Arc Graphics on the like of AArch64 / POWER / RISC-V.
