Intel Open-Sources Broadwell GPU Driver & Indicates Major Silicon Changes

An anonymous reader writes "Intel shipped open-source Broadwell graphics driver support for Linux this weekend. While building upon the existing Intel Linux GPU driver, the kernel driver changes are significant in size for Broadwell. Code comments from Intel indicate that these processors shipping in 2014 will have "some of the biggest changes we've seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU" and "dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes." Come next year, Intel may now be able to better take on AMD and NVIDIA discrete graphics solutions."

Comments

One change I want to see

[msobkow]

There is only one change I'd like to see made sooner rather than later:

Stop using my main memory as a video buffer!!!

The main reason I opt for discrete graphics solutions is not because of the performance of the graphics, but the lack of main memory throughput degradation. I build boxes to compute, not sling graphics.