The upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to be an especially nice release for users of modern Intel graphics hardware on Linux. The very latest feature being enabled for this next Linux kernel version is SR-IOV for Battlemage GPUs to vastly enhance the Intel Linux graphics experience in virtualized environments.
Ahead of the Linux 6.17 kernel merge window there are already patches queued for enabling Panther Lake’s Xe3 graphics by default (effectively declaring it as stable ahead of the Panther Lake laptops debuting), multi-device (multi-GPU) preparations as part of Project Battlematrix, Wildcat Lake graphics support, fan control and voltage information from the Xe driver via sysfs, flicker-free boot improvements, experimental flip queue support, and even the long belated/overlooked DG1 graphics enabled by default.
Now the very latest being submitted today to DRM-Next ahead of Linux 6.17 is enabling Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) support for Battlemage graphics. Intel has been supporting SR-IOV across their graphics processors for several generations now although the official SR-IOV support under Linux for different Intel graphics generations have varied. For Linux 6.17, SR-IOV is working and enabled for Battlemage GPUs assuming your graphics card is running on recent firmware.
SR-IOV support on Battlemage is part of Intel’s Project Battlematrix plans. Intel engineers are also working on VDI and other virtualization improvements for their graphics hardware too as part of Battlematrix.
drm-xe-next-2025-07-15:
Driver Changes:
– Create and use XE_DEVICE_WA infrastructure
– SRIOV: Mark BMG as SR-IOV capable
– Dont skip TLB invalidations on VF
– Fix migration copy direction in access_memory
– General code clean-up
– More missing XeLP workarounds
– SRIOV: Relax VF/PF version negotiation
– SRIOV: LMTT invalidation
SR-IOV for Battlemage is part of today’s drm-xe-next pull request.
Linux 6.17 is shaping up to be a very exciting kernel feature release. The Linux 6.17 merge window will be open during early August while the stable Linux v6.17 will debut in early October and be powering the likes of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 among other Linux distributions.
