News Intel Battlemage display drivers coming soon for Linux — functional drivers to focus on power efficiency first

[Admin]

Intel is working on bringing Linux display driver functionality to its upcoming Battlemage GPUs. A functional driver will be integrated into Linux 6.11's next kernel cycle.

Intel Battlemage display drivers coming soon for Linux — functional drivers to focus on power efficiency first : Read more

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

"This new display driver is by no means complete, but it provides display functionality for Battlemage GPUs for the first time in Linux, which is a big deal regardless."

First time ?

Intel's Lunar Lake iGPU Battlemage "Xe2" graphics architecture already got support for the display, & also audio via open-source Linux support patches, and Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver updates.

"hda: Add Intel BMG PCI ID and HDMI codec vid." Date: Wed, 15 May 2024

[GIT PULL] sound updates for 6.10-rc1 - Takashi Iwai

I will post the display support kernel link as well. There are even more patch entries !

But, Linux 6.10 also had support for actually driving a display attached to the Xe2 integrated graphics with Lunar Lake. This was the main pull request for the drm subsystems for 6.10.

[PULL] drm-intel-next - Rodrigo Vivi

i915/xe display:
- Lunar Lake display enabling, including cdclk and other refactors
- BIOS/VBT/opregion related refactor
- Digital port related refactor/clean-up
- Fix 2s boot time regression on DP panel replay init
- Remove duplication on audio enable/disable on SDVO and g4x+ DP
- Disable AuxCCS framebuffers if built for Xe
xe:
- improved error capture
- clean up some uAPI leftovers
- devcoredump update
- Add BMG mocs table
- Handle GSCCS ER interrupt
- Implement xe2- and GuC workarounds

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

You forgot to mention these patch entries, since they are related to the above patches for Battlemage iGPU.

Because, Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs also got support, via a new patch that brings in support for DLVR (Digital Linear Voltage Regulator), which reduces the power input and in turns add to the overall efficiency of these ultra-low power SOCs. It will be merged with the upcoming Linux 6.11 cycle.

[PATCH 3/3] thermal: intel: int340x: Add DLVR support for Lunar Lake - Srinivas Pandruvada

Digital Linear Voltage Regulator can help in reducing the power consumption of the processor. The patch for the Linux kernel extends the int340x_thermal driver for dealing with Lunar Lake's DLVR.

Lunar Lake's DLVR behaves the same as with Meteor Lake and Arow Lake. The MMIO offset and bit positions have been changed though, when compared to the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake lineup.

 

[TechyIT223]

Linux always stays ahead of windows in terms of early patches and support of any hardware. I wonder why 🤔

Also why does the author think battlemage GPUs will find more use in integrated graphics rather than desktop variants? Low powered transistors doesn't make sense as outlined in the last paragraph of this article.

Im certainly fine with battlemage GPUs targeting the desktop market as previou rumors have been hinting. Of course iGPU is also xe2's domain, but desktop variants will share same architecture as integrated graphics

 

[Eximo]

They'll certainly sell more Battlemage iGPUs than discrete unless some miracle happens with gaming performance.

The node they are using for the integrated tile isn't the same as the one they will use on the desktop/mobile discrete GPUs. One is low power (N3B), the other is going to be the higher power version of the node (N3P, presumably)

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

First time ? There are even more patch entries !

April support for the Xe2 GPUs in the display drivers, for enabling display output handling specifically for Battlemage. BMG graphics cards will only support a maximum DisplayPort bandwidth of UHBR13.5.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/intel-gfx/2024-April/348477.html

This was the December 2023 pull request. "Xe" graphics driver replaced the traditional i915 DRM kernel driver at Linux. Following are all the changes added for Xe2 (Battlemage) GPUs:

https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/ZXzTA75G5VhCrDis@intel.com/T/#u

• drm/xe: Add performance tuning settings for MTL and Xe2
• drm/xe/xe2: Add MOCS table
• drm/xe/xe2: Respond to TRTT faults as unsuccessful page fault
• drm/xe/xe2: Add initial workarounds
• drm/xe/xe2: Set tile y type in XY_FAST_COPY_BLT to Tile4
• drm/xe/xe2: Update MOCS fields in blitter instructions
• drm/xe/xe2: Determine bios enablement for flat ccs on igfx
• drm/xe/xe2: Modify main memory to ccs memory ratio.
• drm/xe/xe2: Allocate extra pages for ccs during bo create
• drm/xe/xe2: Updates on XY_CTRL_SURF_COPY_BLT
• drm/xe/xe2: Update chunk size for each iteration of ccs copy
• drm/xe/xe2: Update emit_pte to use compression enabled PAT index
• drm/xe/xe2: Update context image layouts
• drm/xe/xe2: Handle fused-off CCS engines
• drm/xe/xe2: AuxCCS is no longer used
• drm/xe/xe2: Define Xe2_LPG IP features
• drm/xe/xe2: Define Xe2_LPM IP features
• drm/xe/xe2: Track VA bits independently of max page table level
• drm/xe/xe2: Program GuC's MOCS on Xe2 and beyond
• drm/xe/xe2: Program correct MOCS registers
• drm/xe/xe2: Update SVG state handling

And the list goes on. There have been more entries/patches for Battlemage support.

 

[TechyIT223]

They'll certainly sell more Battlemage iGPUs than discrete unless some miracle happens with gaming performance.

The node they are using for the integrated tile isn't the same as the one they will use on the desktop/mobile discrete GPUs. One is low power (N3B), the other is going to be the higher power version of the node (N3P, presumably)

Are you sure about the nodes used? Because N3P it seems only has higher performance characteristics. Not sure about the power though, but it could also be the same.

But anyway Intel should be better off if they use the same nodes on both iGPU and discrete gaming cards.

 

[Eximo]

Only rumor/information I can find is that N4P is likely to continue to be used for Nvidia Blackwell desktop cards and was supposed to be for Battlemage, with plans to use N3P for Celestial. Likely for RDNA4 as well. Seems the smaller nodes are going to be reserved for CPU logic for now. Since Intel put the iGPU on the logic tile they are kind of stuck with having two nodes for the same generation.

They didn't do too badly, looks like clock speeds are still well over 2GHz on the iGPU. Arc only maxes out at 2400Mhz on N6. Next 'shrink' might gain them a few hundred Mhz. They are talking 3Ghz from Blackwell.

But that is all rumor.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

N3P is actually an optical shrink of N3E, and it is compatible with its predecessor in terms of IP blocks, process/design rules, electronic design automation (EDA) tools etc.

N3P = at least 5% higher performance than N3E, 2% optical shrink, and 1.04x transistor density.

 

[TechyIT223]

Thanks for the clarification and input guys