Intel has published an initial version of the new driver for the Linux kernel — Xe, designed for use with integrated GPUs and discrete graphics cards based on the Intel Xe architecture, which has been utilized in integrated graphics since the Tiger Lake processors and in standalone graphics cards from the Arc family. The goal of the driver development is to provide a foundation for supporting new chips that is not tied to code supporting older platforms. It is also stated that there will be more active code sharing for Xe with other components of the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) subsystem.
The code is initially designed to support various hardware architectures and is available for testing on x86 and ARM systems. The implementation is currently viewed as an experimental version for discussion among developers and is not yet ready for integration into the main kernel. Work on the old i915 driver will continue, and its maintenance will persist. The new Xe driver is expected to be completed within 2023.
In the new driver, most of the code for interacting with displays is borrowed from the i915 driver, and developers plan to enable code sharing between both drivers to avoid duplication of standard components (currently, similar code is simply rebuilt twice, but alternative options for code sharing are being discussed). The memory model in Xe closely resembles the implementation of the memory model in i915, and the implementation of execbuf is very similar to execbuf3 from the i915 code.
To support the graphical APIs OpenGL and Vulkan, changes have also been prepared for the Mesa drivers Iris and ANV through the Xe module, in addition to the Linux kernel driver. In its current state, the Xe-Mesa integration is sufficiently developed to run GNOME, browsers, and games based on OpenGL and Vulkan, although there are still some issues and bugs that can lead to crashes. Additionally, performance optimization work has not yet been conducted.
Source: opennet.ru
