Intel begins laying the groundwork for Xe3P GPUs on Linux
Just as the open-source drivers for Intel's Xe3 graphics devices are reaching maturity, the company's Linux development team is already gearing up for the next generation. The first batch of patches to enable the Xe3P graphics architecture has been fired off, marking the beginning of the long road to supporting Intel's upcoming GPUs on Linux.
With the current focus on finalising Xe3 support for Panther Lake, Intel's open-source graphics programmers are now shifting their attention to the future. A set of 22 patches (via Phoronix) was sent out to the dri-devel mailing list this week, laying the foundational framework for the Xe3P architecture within the Linux kernel driver.
For now, the enablement is purely in the kernel space, which handles the low-level communication with the hardware. The user-space drivers, which are part of the Mesa 3D graphics stack (specifically the Iris Gallium3D driver for OpenGL and the ANV driver for Vulkan), have not yet received any Xe3P-related code. Given the timing, it's likely that this preliminary code will land in the Linux v6.19 kernel, which is on track to be the first stable kernel release of 2026. However, it will take several more kernel and Mesa release cycles before we have full support for Xe3P and all its features are in place.
We expect to see the Xe3P GPU architecture featured in the consumer segment, powering the likes of Nova Lake-S processors and Arc Celestial discrete graphics. As for data centres, Intel has already confirmed that the recently announced Crescent Island will be based on Xe3P.
KitGuru says: How will Xe3P compare to Intel's current solutions? Can it finally bring Intel's discrete gaming GPUs to higher market segments?
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