Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake & Battlemage Graphics: Official Support in Linux 6.12

Intel engineers have wasted no time after the Linux 6.11 merge window, already submitting kernel graphics driver changes to the DRM-Next branch for the upcoming Linux 6.12 cycle. Their focus? Wrapping up the Xe2 graphics support for Lunar Lake and Battlemage discrete graphics, aiming to expose this support by default.

Battlemage Graphics and Lunar Lake Support

In Linux 6.11, initial support for Battlemage graphics—the successor to DG2/Alchemist—was introduced. Additionally, ongoing work has improved Lunar Lake graphics support. However, the Linux 6.11 kernel doesn’t expose Battlemage or Lunar Lake graphics support out-of-the-box. Instead, users must enable it via the “force probe” parameter if they have early hardware and want accelerated graphics support.

Exposing by Default in Linux 6.12

The latest Linux mailing list commentary suggests that exposing this support by default might happen in Linux 6.12. The merge window for Linux 6.12 will open in September after the stable release of v6.11, pulling material from DRM-Next. Unfortunately, the stable Linux 6.12 kernel won’t be available until November. This timing is less than ideal, considering that Lunar Lake is launching in early September. Early adopters may need to use an in-development kernel version or stick with Linux 6.11, depending on the completeness of the support.

AMD’s Alternative and the Current State

Meanwhile, AMD’s recently launched Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point,” an alternative to Lunar Lake with AMD RDNA3.5 graphics, already has graphics support working on the current stable kernel. However, it’s still not an ideal out-of-the-box experience for currently-released Linux distributions.

Xe2 GPU and User-Space API Changes

In the drm-xe-next pull request for Linux 6.12, the Xe kernel driver patches are being queued. Notably, the additional SIMD16 Execution Units (EUs) are reported, which are essential for Lunar Lake and Battlemage. Userspace has been testing this feature for a few weeks. Other changes include general improvements, cleanups, further support for SR-IOV, and efforts to officially expose Lunar Lake and Battlemage by the driver. Some details are still in flux.

The user-space API change for exposing the SIMD16 EU mask addresses differences between platforms. Previously, PVC, Xe2, and later platforms reported the number of 16-wide EUs without distinguishing between them. Now, a new item in the topology query ensures the correct number is used based on the platform.

Conclusion

With one month remaining before the cut-off for new Direct Rendering Manager material in the Linux 6.12 merge window, we hope to see good default support for both Lunar Lake and Battlemage. Until then, early Ubuntu 24.10 users may face a lack of out-of-the-box support, but Ubuntu 25.04 should address this next spring, along with other autumn Linux distribution releases.