Two separate patch series updated this week for the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack is the still-ongoing work around the DRM sharpness property for the new adaptive sharpening filter with Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics and then separately is the work to bring VRAM Self Refresh (VRSR) over to the modern Xe kernel driver.
Going back to the middle of 2024 has been the Intel Linux engineers working on enabling the new adaptive sharpening filter introduced by Lunar Lake and to be carried forward with future Intel graphics/display hardware. The adaptive sharpening within the new Intel display engine carries minimal power and performance impact and can provide for a nice image upscaling experience for photos / image viewing and more. For user-space this is to be exposed via a new DRM sharpness property.
Sent out yesterday were the latest DRM sharpness patches for making use of this Lunar Lake feature and standardizing on this DRM sharpness property.
It’s too late to find this DRM sharpness work for the Linux v6.15 kernel cycle but perhaps it will finally be completed in time for the v6.16 kernel cycle later in the year…
Separately, also sent out this week were patches for bringing VRAM Self Refresh to the Intel Xe kernel driver. The older i915 kernel driver already supports VRAM Self Refresh for Arc Graphics while this is about bringing VRSR to the Xe driver that is needed for Battlemage and hardware moving forward.
As explained in prior articles, VRAM Self Refresh is during D3cold/S0ix sleep states and 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 mode. The downside to VRSR is a slight power consumption cost due to keeping the dedicated vRAM partially powered-up.
This patch series has the latest Intel Xe driver work along with PCIe ACPI patches for allowing VRSR. Hopefully this work will also be buttoned up soon.
