As a good sign of the progress being made on the Xe3 integrated graphics Linux support and of the Core Ultra Panther Lake launch approaching, the necessary graphics firmware binaries have now been upstreamed to the linux-firmware.git repository.
For months now Intel software engineers have been working on the open-source Linux driver support for the new Xe3 integrated graphics initially being found within Panther Lake. That work has included the Xe kernel graphics driver, the Iris Gallium3D and ANV Vulkan drivers within Mesa, and also the Compute Runtime stack for GPU compute with Panther Lake graphics. Necessary though for any level of support with the Xe kernel mode driver is needing the firmware bits for initializing the GuC and HuC micro-controllers. Those firmware binaries are now public and upstream in linux-firmware.git as an important pre-launch step.
The Intel GuC micro-controller is responsible for job scheduling, context submission, power management, and other vital roles for modern Intel graphics. The Intel HuC controller meanwhile is important for offloading some media processing work to this dedicated IP. Without the firmware for GuC in particular, modern Intel graphics can’t function.
Thus it was exciting to see on Sunday this merge to linux-firmware.git pushing the initial Panther Lake graphics firmware files.
In turn those Panther Lake firmware files should be picked up by the different Linux distributions and their linux-firmware packages as part of providing out-of-the-box support for upcoming Intel Panther Lake laptops. The driver work around Panther Lake remains ongoing but will hopefully be all settled in advance of Panther Lake debuting in late 2025 ahead of the expected consumer debut in early 2026.
