With the first quarter quickly drawing to a close, here’s a look back at the most popular Intel Linux news of the quarter. There’s been excitement with the Battlemage discrete graphics cards with their open-source driver, early work on Xe3 graphics, AVX10.2 dropping the optional 512-bit features to make it mandatory now (thankfully!), and a lot of exciting upstream Linux kernel improvements.
For reliving the Intel Linux Q1-2025 highlights, here is a look at the most popular Intel news on Phoronix during the first quarter for any interesting news you may have missed. Here’s the 20 most popular Intel stories for Q1:
Intel Core 2 CPUs Have Been Affected By An Annoying Linux Kernel Bug For 5+ Years
A fix was merged to the Linux 6.14 kernel on Friday — and also for back-porting to existing Linux stable kernels over the coming days — for fixing an annoying problem with Intel Core 2 processors. The problem, which was introduced to the Linux kernel back in 2019, could lead to system stalls and boot delays for those still using Intel Core 2 CPUs with modern distributions.
Intel AVX10 Drops Optional 512-bit: No AVX10 256-bit Only E-Cores In The Future
Intel updated their AVX10 whitepaper and associated open-source compiler patches around this next Advanced Vector Extensions standard… While AVX10 had intended to allow either 256-bit or 512-bit modes depending upon processor capabilities, Intel has dropped the 256-bit-only approach and going for 512-bit everywhere. Thus it would seem to indicate that Intel E cores of the future will properly support AVX 512-bit operation!
Intel Arc B580 Linux Graphics Driver Performance One Month After Launch
Yesterday I looked at how the Intel OpenCL GPU compute performance evolved for the Arc Graphics B580 in the one month since that first Battlemage graphics card premiered. There were nice Intel GPU compute optimizations merged over the past month to improve the experience. Here are some Linux graphics/gaming benchmarks for the Intel Arc B580 comparing the prior launch day Linux driver performance to where the Mesa performance is at now.
Intel’s Newest Open-Source Project Is “Polite Guard”
Intel’s newest open-source project and addition to their AI offerings is… Polite Guard.
Linux 6.15 Goes Very Heavy On Intel & AMD x86_64 CPU Changes
Merged today for the recently-opened Linux 6.15 merge window were all of the “x86/core” changes that are particularly heavy on new feature work for both Intel and AMD x86/x86_64 processors. This is easily quite one of the most significant Intel/AMD CPU set of updates in a given kernel cycle in quite some time.
System76’s New Linux Mini PC Pairs Intel Meteor Lake + Dual 2.5G Ethernet + Coreboot
System76 this morning announced the 2025 version of their Meerkat mini Linux PC. This new mini PC designed for Linux pairs an Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” SoC with dual 2.5G Ethernet and booting using Coreboot for a intriguing combination whether it’s for a lightweight Linux desktop PC or a small office/home server.
Fedora Stakeholders Talk Of Forking Intel’s Compute Runtime To Maintain Older Hardware
With the Intel Graphics Compiler having dropped Ice Lake and older support and in turn the Intel Compute Runtime dropping Ice Lake and older to just focus on newer Intel graphics hardware support, Fedora packagers and other stakeholders have been grappling with how to handle the situation. For Fedora 42 there’s been a proposal for updating to the newer Intel Compute Runtime code for benefiting the more recent Intel graphics hardware while in recent days there’s been talk of forking the legacy code.
Intel Posts Linux Kernel Patches For Supporting APX – Advanced Performance Extensions
Intel initially detailed Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) back in mid-2023 as extensions to double the number of general purpose registers and add other performance features. In the time since they have done a lot preparing the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers for the new APX ISA features while finally today they sent out an initial set of patches for preparing the Linux kernel for APX processors.
Google Interested In The Modern Intel Xe Linux Kernel Driver On Alder Lake
The modern Intel “Xe” Linux kernel Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver as the clean successor to the i915 driver has been an experimental option for Tigerlake and newer but only for Xe2 graphics (Lunar Lake / Battlemage) and newer is it used by default. But Google at least for their Chromebook use-cases is entertaining the idea of switching over to the Xe driver rather than the long-used i915 kernel driver for Alder Lake era hardware.
Intel Killer E5000 Ethernet Support For Linux 6.15
The upcoming Linux 6.15 kernel cycle will be adding support for Intel Killer E5000 Ethernet.
Curious Intel Linux Driver Maintainer Changes In Recent Days
This week besides the drama over Apple Silicon maintainership for the upstream Linux kernel, in recent days there has also been a number of rather subtle changes to the maintainership of several Intel Linux kernel drivers.
Intel Gigabit Ethernet Driver To Speed-Up With AF_XDP Zero-Copy For Linux 6.14
Queued up into the networking subsystem’s “net-next” branch last week ahead of the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle is AF_XDP zero-copy support for the common Intel Gigabit Ethernet “IGB” driver. With this the AF_XDP performance improvements can be quite dramatic in leveraging this zero-copy path.
Intel CPU Microcode Updated For Five New Security Issues
Intel just published new CPU microcode for Alder Lake, Emerald Rapids, Ice Lake, Raptor Lake, Sapphire Rapids, Sierra Forest, and other platforms going back to Coffee Lake H. There are five new security issues being addressed plus a number of different functional issues being resolved.
Intel Calls For More Modular PC Designs, Easier Component Replacement/Upgrades
In an Intel blog post today they outlined their desire for a more modular PC design to enhance repairability and reduce e-waste. It’s very much along similar lines of the Framework Computer upgradeable and easily serviceable laptops. With some luck hopefully we will be seeing more modular PC designs moving forward.
Intel Xe Driver Introducing SVM, EU Stall Sampling & Other New Features For Linux 6.15
Intel engineers today sent out their final drm-xe-next feature pull request to DRM-Next of the remaining features they are ready to land for the modern Intel Xe kernel graphics driver with the upcoming Linux 6.15 cycle. It’s a big one.
12 Years After Haswell, Intel Open-Source Graphics Developers Still Make Occasional Fix
The Intel Haswell CPUs were originally introduced back in 2013 and great for the time. Under Microsoft Windows the driver support has long been obsolete but under Linux with Intel’s open-source driver support there is still even the occasional fix all these years later. Coming up for the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle in 2025 is a fix to benefit Haswell and similarly aged Intel platforms with integrated graphics.
Years In The Making, Intel Timed I/O “TIO” Looks To Finally Land In Linux 6.15
Intel Timed I/O “TIO” has been present on Intel processors going back to 2019 and the Linux driver support has been worked on for several years, but finally this year with the upcoming Linux 6.15 cycle is this Intel Timed I/O code expected to be merged.
Linux’s FineIBT Protections “Critically Flawed” Until Intel CPUs Appear With FRED
FineIBT is a Linux kernel initiative led by Intel engineers that aimed to combine the best of Intel Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) and Control Flow Integrity. FineIBT was merged in 2022 for the Linux 6.2 kernel as an alternative control flow integrity implementation. Some FineIBT weaknesses were previously addressed but now the implementation has been determined to be “critically flawed” at least until next-generation Intel processors appear with FRED.
Intel Engineer Posts Cache-Aware Load Balancing For Linux – May Be Very Useful For AMD
An exciting new Linux kernel patch series was posted today for testing… Introducing support for cache-aware load-balancing. The patch comes from a veteran Intel Linux engineer but this cache aware load balancing may also prove very applicable for AMD Linux users for EPYC and Ryzen processors.
Intel Tofino P4 Software Open-Sourced Years
An interesting open-source announcement out of Intel this week is that they have open-sourced their P4 software for their line of Tofino programmable Ethernet switches.
On the Linux hardware review side it wasn’t too active for Intel with sadly not having received any review units of their recently announced Xeon 6500P/6700P parts or any other new wares from them for Linux benchmarking/review:
AMD Ryzen 9000 vs. Intel Core Ultra Arrow Lake On Linux For Q1-2025 In ~400 Benchmarks
For those wondering how the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” series and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Arrow Lake” desktop processors are battling it out on Linux, here are some fresh benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux with the latest software updates as well as the newest system BIOS updates for a fresh, all-new look at these Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs on Linux.
Intel Arc B570 Graphics Performance On Linux
Last month when Intel formally introduced Battlemage graphics their initial products in the B-Series were the B570 and B580 graphics cards. The B580 went on sale in December and we’ve been busy testing the B580 on Linux since while today the embargo expires on the Arc B570 with those graphics cards going on sale this morning. Here is a first look at the Intel Arc B570 graphics and compute performance under Linux with their latest open-source drivers.
Intel Battlemage Showing Off Nice OpenCL Gains With Newest Open-Source Compute Stack
Last month with the launch of Intel Battlemage with the Arc B580 graphics card, there was fairly nice open-source GPU compute performance but with some outliers… Today it’s a pleasure to report that with the newest open-source GPU compute stack as of this past week, there are some nice Xe2 / Battlemage improvements for enhancing the performance of some OpenCL workloads and also correcting the performance of some workloads that were in poor standing on launch day.
Intel Announces Xeon 6500P + Xeon 6700P Processors
After launching the Intel Xeon 6900P “Granite Rapids” processors last September, today Intel is expanding the family with the launch of the Xeon 6500P and Xeon 6700P server processors.
