To help with idle/suspend scenarios use for Intel Arc B-Series “Battlemage” graphics processors, a set of patches were posted today for the Intel Xe kernel graphics driver for enabling VRAM Self Refresh “VRSR” support.
If VRSR doesn’t ring a bell, it’s not an entirely new feature but one that isn’t talked about often. Intel Arc A-Series (Alchemist) GPUs already support VRSR on Linux. As explained back in 2022 when the initial Intel Alchemist VRSR enablement was ongoing, VRAM Self Refresh is for use during D3cold and S0ix suspend. VRAM Self-Refresh avoids having to possibly evict local memory objects over to system memory during the low-power states. VRAM Self-Refresh is able to retain the dedicated video memory context and allows it to be restored when exiting the D3cold power state, which can lower the latency when leaving the low-power state. The downside is there is a slight power consumption cost due to keeping the dedicated video memory partially powered-up.
This patch series wires up VRSR support within the Intel Xe driver for Battlemage GPUs and enables it during both runtime suspend and system-wide suspend. The patch series was sent out today as a “Request For Comments” and remains to be seen how quickly it will be deemed ready for the mainline Linux kernel — whether it’s done within a few weeks for Linux v6.15 or held off for a later cycle. Separately, sent out earlier today was also a lot of new Intel graphics driver feature code ahead of Linux 6.15.
