Released tonight was the Intel Compute Runtime 25.44.36015.5 as their roughly monthly update to this open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL support for Intel’s integrated and discrete graphics hardware.
As is typically the theme, much of the new Intel Compute Runtime release is focused on delivering various new features and performance optimizations. Plus ongoing preparations for upcoming hardware, which at the moment is largely centered around Xe3 with Panther Lake. While we have seen the Intel Xe kernel driver beginning to prep for the Crescent Island Xe3P discrete GPU as well as the Nova Lake integrated Xe3P graphics, so far on the Compute Runtime side it’s still mostly on the Panther Lake / Wildcat Lake focus.
Some of the Intel Compute Runtime 25.44.36015.5 changes include:
– Support for OpenCL C in the Level Zero runtime. This is prototype support for OCL C in the Level Zero runtime with zeModuleCreate.
– Enabling Level Zero device unified shared memory (USM) growing pools for better performance.
– Enabling USM pooling for Level Zero with Lunar Lake graphics.
– Using 2MB heaps for 2MB-aligned allocations for better performance. Separately there is also a preference now for using 2MB heaps for OpenCL buffers (cl_buffers) where possible.
– Improved compilation time for the Compute Runtime.
– Implementing host functions API calls for Level Zero.
– Dropping SPIR (not SPIR-V) support from Xe2 and newer GPUs.
– Enabling support for the Level Zero v1.14 API.
– Enabling defer backing by default when using the Xe kernel driver.
– Various Panther Lake / Xe3 graphics fixes/workarounds.
The updated Intel Compute Runtime for Windows and Linux systems can be downloaded via GitHub.
