02-18-2019, 09:40 AM
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-...38631.html
Quote:Intel has confirmed that recent patches to its Linux graphics driver were related to its continued work on preparing the ecosystem for its new line of discrete graphics cards.
Phoronix reported that Intel released 42 such patches with more than 4,000 lines of code between them on February 14. The main purpose of the patches was to introduce the concept of memory regions in "preparation for upcoming devices with device local memory." (Such as, you know, discrete graphics cards.)
The integrated GPUs found in many of Intel's CPUs don't rely on this memory region setup, so all signs pointed towards the Linux drivers being part of Intel's plans to build standalone GPUs. Just in case those signs weren't obvious enough, however, Intel has confirmed the motivation behind these drivers in a tweet: