Intel has started to push out support for its next-gen Xe3 "Celestial" GPUs for Panther Lake CPUs at Linux, showing the firm's commitment to early support for future products.
Intel Already Starts To Commit Towards Support For Next-Gen Architectures at Linux, Ensuring On-Launch Support
Team Blue, in the last few months, has really been quite proactive when it comes to bringing in hardware and software enablement of its future architectures, especially with Lunar Lake SoCs, which has improved Intel's image in the eyes of open-source developers on Linux. Now, the firm has decided to go one step further, and according to a new report by Phoronix, Intel has pushed out initial patches for kernel graphics driver support for Xe3, which will be integrated into next-gen Panther Lake SoCs.
In terms of the new patches, Intel has started building initial Xe3 code paths, targeting the ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D/OpenGL drivers, and the code has been merged with Mesa 24.3; however, all the support for Intel's Panther Lake and Xe3 is hidden for now, and will probably be visible once Intel pushes out the chunk of driver updates for the respective architectures.
Intel's Xe3 "Celestial" GPUs are said to bring in significant performance leaps when compared to its predecessor, as Team Blue is rumored to feature up to 12 Xe3 cores in Panther Lake SoCs. In a previous report, we disclosed how Intel's Panther Lake lineup has seen its PCI IDs listed on the drm-next code, and now, with Intel pushing out additional patches for Xe3, it won't be wrong to say that the next upcoming mobile CPU lineup will feature in out-of-box support at Linux, further fueling its adoption on the platform.
Intel's Panther Lake lineup is far away from its official release for now; hence, the firm still has quite some work to do on the platform. However, Intel Linux engineers' speedy enablement clearly shows their dedication to the OS, and this will ultimately encourage wider consumer adoption in the long run.
