Building the kernel for the Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe MAX Graphics

The latest kernel driver for the Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics adapter is available in source form in the intel-gpu/kernel project on GitHub.

This guide provides instructions for downloading, building, and installing the kernel source as well as required firmware files. The instructions are written for Ubuntu 20.04, and should be adaptable to other operating systems to build a Linux* kernel using the sources published.

NOTE: The kernel you build while following the instructions on this page is not recommended for use as the primary kernel in systems configured with both an Intel Iris Xe graphics adapter and an Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics adapter. On those systems, we recommend you follow the instructions provided on this guide, which uses a different kernel for each of the two adapters. If you try and boot the kernel built on this page directly on a system with the Intel Iris Xe graphics adapter, the system may lock up during boot.

Configure the host

Install packages necessary for building the Linux kernel from source:

sudo apt install build-essential git gcc bison flex libssl-dev bc cpio \
  openssl lz4

Download the kernel source and build it

The following will download the kernel sources from GitHub, configure it, and compile it in the ${HOME}/kernel-xe-max directory.

cd ${HOME}
git clone --branch=main --depth=1 \
  https://github.com/intel-gpu/kernel \
  kernel-xe-max
cd kernel-xe-max
cp /boot/config-$(uname -r) .config
make olddefconfig
make -j $(nproc --all) targz-pkg LOCALVERSION="-xe-max"

At the end of the build, a tarball will be ready in ${HOME}/kernel-xe-max:

ls -l ${HOME}/kernel-xe-max/*.gz

Install the Xe MAX firmware

Prior to installing the custom kernel, you need to install the firmware files required by the Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics adapter. The following will download an archive of the latest firmware files and decompress them into /lib/firmware/i915, where the kernel will look for them while booting:

wget -qO - \
  https://repositories.intel.com/graphics/firmware/linux-firmware-dg1_2020.43.tgz |
  sudo tar -C /lib/firmware/i915 -xvz --warning=no-timestamp

Install the kernel supporting Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics

You can now install the custom kernel. This is done after the firmware files are installed to make sure that the firmware files are available while the initial ramdisk is created during the kernel installation:

mkdir kernel-xe-max-install
tar -C kernel-xe-max-install -xzf linux-5.4.48-xe-max-x86.tar.gz
sudo cp -r kernel-xe-max-install/lib/modules/5.4.48-xe-max /lib/modules/
sudo /sbin/installkernel \
  5.4.48-xe-max \
  kernel-xe-max-install/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.48-xe-max \
  kernel-xe-max-install/boot/System.map-5.4.48-xe-max \
  /boot

Once the kernel has been installed, you can reboot:

sudo reboot

Verify the Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics driver is initialized

Use lspci to verify the Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics driver is initialized by the i915 kernel driver:

lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 3 | grep -E "VGA|driver"

Output should look similar to the following:

00:03.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:4905] (rev 01)
        Kernel driver in use: i915

Install user space media and compute packages

You now have a kernel with support for the Intel Iris Xe MAX graphics adapter, and can install the latest compute and media packages, as documented in the installation guides.

Configure permissions to access GPU

In order to access GPU capabilities, a user needs to have the correct permissions on the system. The follwing will add the user to the render group owning /dev/dri/render*:

sudo gpasswd -a ${USER} render
newgrp render

Tests

Verify the kernel is the version you built

This should report 'Linux 5.4.48-xe-max':

uname -sr

Verify the graphics platform name

Verify 'platform: DG1' is listed in i915_capabilities:

sudo grep "platform:" /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_capabilities

Verify Open CL

After you have followed the installation guides to install the user space packages, you can verify that OpenCL driver is working by using clinfo:

sudo apt install clinfo
clinfo

Verify media

After you have followed the installation guides to install the user space packages, you can verify that the media driver is working by using vainfo:

sudo apt install vainfo
vainfo

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