Intel and AMD they prepare major driver and firmware updates that they implement into the Linux kernel. The former is developing a new driver aimed at making better use of its recent dedicated and integrated Xe graphics, while the latter is improving the firmware and RDNA 3 experience.

The direction of graphics drivers present in the Linux kernel began to turn 180 degrees in the middle of the last decade, more precisely after the announcement of AMDGPU, which marked the final and official adoption of the standard graphics system stack by AMD parts. From there, Intel responded by significantly improving the performance of its controllers. At this point, it doesn’t hurt to remind you that all Linux drivers come from reverse engineering is largely a myth (DualSense is also supported by the official driver).

Back to the present, Intel is preparing a new driver for the Xe core, which would replace the old i915 in integrated graphics with Xe technology (from Tiger Lake) and dedicated company. Interestingly, the Intel Arc graphics has only one scenario in which it has been fine since day one when running OpenGL on Linux.

The Xe driver will be compatible with the user-space drivers provided by Mesa for Intel: Iris, which provides support for OpenGL, and ANV, which provides support for Vulkan. Aside from what the Xe driver can contribute, ANV continues to be one of Intel’s Achilles tendons in Linux, especially when it comes to running native games built with Vulkan or via Proton. It will also have support for OneAPI, Intel’s development platform, and for OpenCL through the corresponding userspace driver.

The i915 driver, as its name suggests, is very old and Intel may have seen that improving it is a difficult task, so the company decided to start developing a new driver from scratch to have a better framework. against AMD and NVIDIA. If it was a bit reminiscent of the Intel Arc dedicated graphics driver situation in Windows, the origins are similar, although the circumstances are very different.

As for AMD, the red giant introduced a series of fixes that make it easier to fall back to the firmware snapshot buffer when the AMDGPU driver fails to load correctly. This change introduces a new approach that should allow recovery of the firmware frame buffer in the event that AMDGPU initialization fails, offering greater resilience especially in contexts where the driver does not fully support the new one. graphics generation, as it is now with RDNA 3 (RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX).

Another set of fixes that AMD has come up with for Linux includes the implementation of user-mode graphics queues for the AMDGPU driver on Navi 3x graphics and later. Basically, they consist of allowing workloads to be submitted directly from a userspace process that has a context in the AMDGPU (which is the component that carries the weight). As a result, you could have a better performance and easier management of apps and certain games running in full screen.

The improvements that AMD plans to introduce to its Linux driver could target future versions of the Steam Deck with RDNA 3 graphics, as Valve’s console operating system, SteamOS 3, is standard GNU/Linux, which means it has added immutability features. prevent breakage and offer developers a more waterproof floor.

Linux graphics driver news hasn’t stopped throwing up some very interesting stuff since 2016, and running triple A Windows video games with the system’s standard graphics stack was considered a pipe dream until relatively recently.

First, we will see if the Xe driver will be able to put Intel on par with AMD and NVIDIA in terms of performance, on the other hand, it will be necessary to see if the patches that AMD is preparing will be able to give the expected results.