Intel News Archives

Following last week's article about Linux developers eyeing a new "DOITM" security mitigation for latest Intel CPUs based on guidance from Intel around Data Operand Independent Timing (DOIT) instructions and then it coming to light that the DOIT mode shouldn't always be on, a lengthier statement from one of Intel's Linux engineers has been published summing up the current beliefs and Linux kernel possibilities around DOIT(M).

Intel engineers this week published new Linux open-source driver code for TPMI, the Topology Aware Register and PM Capsule Interface. Intel TPMI for seemingly future processors will allow for more streamlined power management handling and other enhancements over the way the Intel power management drivers currently function.

Last week I wrote about Linux developers evaluating a new "DOITM" security mitigation for the latest Intel CPUs. While the cost for now of engaging the Data Operand Independent Timing Mode (DOITM) functionality is minimal, following internal Intel engineering discussions it looks like the Linux kernel patches will need to be re-worked with this functionality not intended to always be enabled.

Intel this week held a presentation to talk up the progress they've made on their (Windows) graphics driver since launch for Arc Graphics where for many games there are double digit performance improvements to enjoy with the budget-friendly Arc Graphics A750 and A770 graphics cards.

The last batch of drm-intel-gt-next changes have been sent in to DRM-Next ahead of next month's Linux 6.3 merge window. Notable with this week's changes are more low-level code improvements in preparation for future Intel graphics hardware platforms.

Now that Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" shipped and the initial Linux support is all aligned, recently there has been an uptick in activity around Emerald Rapids and even Granite Rapids as its successor along with the Sierra Forest support. On the EMR front, the latest Linux driver activity is extending the In-Field Scan (IFS) driver for additional testing capabilities.

As a new hardware feature for Intel IoT and server platforms not previously announced at large, Intel Timed I/O is being worked on in a new open-source Linux kernel driver.

Another batch of Intel i915 DRM kernel graphics driver updates were sent out Friday to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of the Linux 6.3 merge window opening next month.

Earlier this month Intel announced they would be discontinuing development of HAXM as a hardware-accelerated execution manager that's been popular on Windows and macOS for Android emulation. While the original announcement discontinued its development immediately, they decided to go ahead and put out one final version: Intel HAXM 7.8 is available today for concluding this open-source project.

For those making use of Intel's sub-NUMA cluster (SNC) configuration option available on their servers since Skylake, the Linux resource control "resctrl" kernel code is being improved upon to better handle this resource configuration.

The Intel "habanalabs" AI driver is moving to the new accelerator "accel" subsystem with the upcoming Linux 6.3 kernel cycle.

Intel open-source engineers continue to be quite busy in bringing up the Linux support for Emerald Rapids as the successor to Sapphire Rapids and then as well for Granite Rapids as the Xeon Scalable processors following that. With the i10nm EDAC changes queued up ahead of Linux 6.3, there is support through Granite Rapids as well as confirming Granite Rapids supporting up to 12 channel DDR5 system memory.

Following the recent release of the Intel Media Driver 2022Q4, Intel's oneVPL GPU runtime has been updated for its quarterly feature release that builds atop the Media Driver / VA-API stack and is about oneAPI integration for the video processing layer.

Among the numerous exciting aspects of Intel's next-generation Meteor Lake client processors is the introduction of the Versatile Processing Unit (VPU) inference accelerator for Computer Vision (CV) and Deep Learning (DL) workloads.

A new feature with Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" that hasn't been talked about too much is the new User Interrupts (UNITR) functionality. The Linux kernel support for it still also hasn't been merged but has shown promising results in patch form.

Intel Sandy Bridge processors launched 12 years ago this month and if you still are relying on these 32nm CPUs, it's really time to consider an upgrade for not only the performance but also security and power efficiency reasons. But if you are content with still churning away on a Sandy Bridge desktop under Linux, picked up for upstream and marked for back-porting is another attempt at dealing with visual glitches and GPU hangs that have been affecting some users with the integrated graphics.

Released on Thursday was the oneAPI Level Zero Loader v1.9.4 as the newest open-source software release from the company.

Intel yesterday submitted another batch of material from drm-intel-gt-next to DRM-Next as new feature code and fixes to queue ahead of the Linux 6.3 merge window opening next month.

Starting to appear in Linux 6.2 as part of the various "fixes" pull requests are new device IDs for adding Intel 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" support for drivers not requiring any other code changes over the existing Sapphire Rapids code path.s

One of the exciting announcements Intel made just before Christmas was announcing their work on the new "Xe" kernel graphics driver for Linux. This new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver will eventually replace the long-standing i915 kernel driver when it comes to handling Gen12 integrated and discrete graphics as well as future Intel graphics hardware.

Intel last week introduced the 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors and kicking off this week is an exciting new development: patches are pending for upstreaming Sapphire Rapids processor support into the open-source Coreboot!

Intel's FFmpeg Cartwheel is the repository where their latest FFmpeg GPU acceleration patches are housed until being upstreamed into FFmpeg proper. Out today is FFmpeg 2022Q4 as the latest collection of Intel's patches for this open-source multimedia library from new hardware support to enhancing AV1 and HEVC/H.265 accelerated video encoding.

As part of Intel's forthcoming Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) specification is the new LKGS instruction for managing the state of the GS segment register in a more flexible manner. With Linux 6.3 the kernel will allow making use of the LKGS instruction where supported on future Intel CPUs.

An interesting patch series posted by Intel this week for the Linux kernel is working on implementing Linear Address Space Separation (LASS) as a feature coming with future processors to help fend off speculative address accesses across user and kernel mode.

Since Linux 6.0 there has been various graphics driver code being upstreamed for Intel's next-generation Meteor Lake processors, among other Meteor Lake driver enablement work in general. Now coming with the Linux 6.3 cycle is enough of the graphics/display driver support for Meteor Lake being in place that it can actually light up a display.

Intel overnight released the Media Driver v22.6.6 release that serves as their 2022Q4 quarterly feature release. Most notable with this updated open-source media acceleration stack is adding initial support for next-generation Meteor Lake processors.

Intel today officially announced the Core i9 13900KS as what they claim to be the "world's fastest desktop processor" with up to a 6.0GHz maximum turbo frequency.

With the Intel VT-d 4.0 specification there is performance monitoring "PerfMon" infrastructure introduced. A new patch series from Intel is preparing for IOMMU performance monitoring with the Linux kernel code.

Back in July Intel engineers published the initial open-source driver code around the new Versatile Processing Unit "VPU" coming with Meteor Lake. This VPU block with 14th Gen Core CPUs is intended for AI inference acceleration for deep learning software.

For years Intel has been developing HAXM as a hardware-accelerated execution manager with a focus on using it for the Android Emulator and QEMU in conjunction with Intel VT enabled processors. HAXM works not only on Linux but Windows, macOS, and some BSDs. Unfortunately, Intel has decided to discontinue development of HAXM.

Merged today for the LLVM 16 compiler stack is support for Intel's next-generation Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" processors with -march=emeraldrapids now being supported.

Since GCC 11 there has been support for AMX and the upcoming Sapphire Rapids CPU features, which has been further improved in the open-source compiler over the past two years. GCC 13 meanwhile as the next GNU Compiler Collection release is bringing Meteor Lake and Sierra Forest, Grand Ridge, and Granite Rapids. Basic enablement of Intel's Emerald Rapids meanwhile was merged yesterday for GCC 13 too.

Intel engineers had submitted support for Linear Address Masking (LAM) with the recently-closed Linux 6.2 merge window but it was rejected by Linus Torvalds. In working toward re-submitted it for the v6.3 cycle or later, an updated Linux LAM patch series was posted today.

If you are running the newest Intel Raptor Lake processors with integrated graphics and the latest Intel Arc Graphics discrete graphics cards under Linux, you are currently relying on the Intel "i915" DRM kernel graphics driver... As implied by the name, it's been used with Intel graphics going back to the old 915G chipset days nearly twenty years ago. But Intel has been working on a new "Xe" kernel graphics driver they have initially announced today and aim to make it production-ready in 2023 for supporting their modern Xe Graphics hardware.

Intel's OpenVINO toolkit for deep learning is out with a major release ahead of the holidays and now has full support for Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" as well as full support now for their discrete GPUs.

Intel last year published documentation concerning a feature for future CPUs that they dubbed FRED, the Flexible Return and Event Delivery. FRED has the capability of helping system performance and response time while now initial patches for the Linux kernel have been published for supporting FRED.

Intel overnight released oneDNN 3.0 as the newest major release to this open-source project for assisting in building deep learning applications. This oneAPI software component can already be used by PyTorch, ONNX, MATLAB, and other prominent software while the v3.0 release prepares it for future Intel hardware.

The "char/misc" changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.2 as the random catch-all area of the kernel for drivers not fitting well in other subsystem areas. Notably with this update for Linux 6.2 is continued work on enabling the Intel-owned Habana Labs Gaudi2 AI accelerator.

Linus Torvalds can be known for his hardware commentary at times like hoping AVX-512 "dies a painful death", Intel's "bad policies" around ECC memory, and giving NVIDIA the finger. The latest colorful commentary by the Linux creator is around Intel's new Linear Address Masking (LAM) feature that aimed to land in Linux 6.2 but is now delayed until the code can be reworked.

After recently getting H.264 and H.265 video decode working for the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver with the current Vulkan Video extensions, David Airlie of Red Hat resumed his prior work on enabling the Vulkan Video extensions for the open-source Intel "ANV" driver too.

Ahead of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable, Xeon CPU Max, and Intel Data Center GPUs shipping, Intel today announced the oneAPI 2023 tools release.

The x86/microcode changes that were merged this week into the Linux 6.2 kernel address prior shortcomings with the Intel In-Field Scan (IFS) driver so it's now deemed ready to help in spotting out faulty silicon across a fleet of systems in production or prior to commissioning new hardware.

There's a fair amount going on in the power management space for both Intel x86_64 and Arm hardware with the Linux 6.2 kernel.

In addition to the in-development Linux 6.2 bringing TDX guest attestation support for use with new processors, another new hardware security feature being enabled with this next kernel release is Asynchronous Exit Notification for Software Guard Extensions (SGX).

The work by Intel engineers the past few months on Call Depth Tracking as a less costly mitigation for Retbleed on Skylake-era processors is now set to be merged for the Linux 6.2 kernel.

What first entered the kernel as the "Software Defined Silicon" and now set to be marketed as Intel On Demand is ready to go with Linux 6.2 for this CPU license activation model appearing with upcoming Intel Xeon server processors.

The Intel TDX guest support has been merged into the in-development Linux 6.2 kernel.

Going back to the summer Intel posted their initial open-source Linux driver for their Versatile Processing Unit "VPU" debuting with Meteor Lake. Since then they have continued refining this open-source VPU Linux driver and with the latest patch series have adapted it to make use of the new accelerator framework/subsystem premiering in Linux 6.2.

While Intel's GPU compute stack for Linux is fully open-source, one area where it still has room for improvement is getting it packaged up on more Linux distributions. The reference binaries published by Intel for their Compute-Runtime and Level Zero components are just Debian/Ubuntu packages but with time -- and as Arc Graphics and other hardware becomes available -- we are seeing more distributions taking a stab at offering up their own package builds.

Released this morning is Intel IGC 1.0.12504.5 for Linux and Windows systems as the newest version of the open-source Intel Graphics Compiler. As the first tagged update in nearly two months, IGC 1.0.12504.5 is a big one.