Intel has been working on software for its Alchemist GPUs for a long time. The Linux graphics driver developers team developed the Vulkan ray-tracing fix back in 2020 to support the Xe-HPG architecture-based Arc Graphics hardware.
Intel’s open-source Mesa Vulkan driver received a 100x performance boost in ray-tracing.
The Mesa Vulkan driver primarily focuses on ray-tracing. A single line of code was responsible for this improvement. The Intel ANV update ensures the scratch memory for the ray-tracing fix gets allocated to local device memory for the Alchemist discrete GPUs.
Previously, without any allocation flags, the RT scratch memory was allocated to the general system memory by default. Now, with the “ANV_BO_ALLOC_LOCAL_MEM” flag tagged, it will reside in the local memory.
Intel Linux graphics driver engineer Lionel Landwerlin had opened the merge request, which eventually ended up in Mesa 22.2. The description for this Intel Vulkan RT code change reads,
Like a 100x (not joking) improvement.
Intel Vulkan RT code
The code led to a massive performance upgrade, but now that it has been corrected, several other open-source Intel Linux graphics drivers will be stable enough for use.
Intel’s Arc Graphics discrete GPUs will be launched in August.
About Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley. It is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer on the basis of revenue, and is the developer of the x86 series of microprocessors – the processors found in most personal computers (PCs).
Incorporated in Delaware, Intel ranked No. 46 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
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