While the Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA) so far is just found on newer Xeon server processors, prior Linux patches acknowledge IAA being found on at least select Panther Lake SoCs. New patches ready for merging to the Linux 6.18 kernel are indicating IAA accelerator(s) will also be found on at least some of the lower-cost Wildcat Lake SoCs too.
The Linux support for Intel’s Wildcat Lake continues coming together and largely building off the existing driver code paths already in place for Panther Lake. Intel Wildcat Lake is expected to be the replacement for aging Alder Lake N and Twin Lake SoCs for entry-level platforms compared to Panther Lake at the higher-end.
Somewhat surprising with Wildcat Lake being lower-positioned, it looks like there will be IAA accelerators with at least some Wildcat Lake SKUs. With Intel IAA aiming to provide faster data processing this could be quite interesting for Wildcat Lake in any edge computing platforms, low-cost servers, etc. It’s not clear though from the driver patches though if all Wildcat Lake SoCs will have IAA accelerators or just select server/enterprise-oriented models. For now at least though software support for Intel accelerators is rather limited and can be a nuisance to setup. Further complicating the setup/usage is Debian orphaning various Intel accelerator software packages due to Intel Linux engineer departures and that will also affect downstreams like Ubuntu Linux.
In any event the DMA engine pull request for Linux 6.18 adds initial Wildcat Lake family support to the Intel DXD driver. Just new device ID matching in the IDXD driver is needed for IAA on Wildcat Lake (WCL).
