With the upcoming release of the Lunar Lake architecture just on the horizon, Intel seems to be preparing the technology for everything, including Linux. As reported by Phoronix, Intel engineers have been focusing on updates to the Lunar Lake and Xe2 GPU architecture, such as ray-tracing support. This solidly ensures the firm’s future enablement at Linux. Let’s take a closer look at what this means for Intel.
If you’d like to hear more about Intel’s upcoming next-gen Lunar Lake, then check out some of our coverage on the topic, including our look at recently leaked photos of the series and our round-up of when Lunar Lake will arrive.
What does this mean for Lunar Lake and Xe2?
With the release of Lunar Lake looming, it seems Intel wants to prepare the architecture by ensuring they’re ready for Linux. The company has uploaded multiple patches, which focus on ray tracing support for Lunar Lake and Xe2 GPUs, as well as revealing the initial graphics card IDs. The reports from Phoronix state that Intel engineers have been preparing their drivers for Lunar Lake architecture. There have been new merge requests from Intel at MESA 24.2, detailing early ray-tracing support for Xe2 architecture and focusing on CPU device information.
Lunar Lake has been adapted so the device information has an added initial, this includes the lineup’s PCI device IDs. Intel has seen a chance to allow Lake Lake architecture to work with the driver even though it’s not fully supported; it has done this by adding an “INTEL_FORCE_PROBE” environment variable with the associated PCI IDs. The Xe Kernel drivers also incorporated this technique, allowing them to experiment with things around them.
In addition to the experimental variable, the new graphics device IDs added are 0x6420, 0x64a0, and 0x64b0. We’ll be able to see early support for Xe2 ray tracing with the 11 new patches expected to be added. It looks like Intel is hoping to do the most for Lunar Lake Linux adopters so that they won’t need to worry about out-of-box support for Linux. We can’t wait to see what else Intel does for Lunar Lake preparations, so stick with us to stay updated.
