Intel's Linux development team has started preparing support for its next-generation Xe3P graphics architecture. The company sent the first batch of patches this week to enable the new GPUs in the Linux kernel. This marks the initial steps toward integrating upcoming Intel processors and graphics cards into open-source environments.
Just as open-source drivers for Intel's current Xe3 graphics devices near maturity, the focus is shifting to the future. Intel's developers are finalizing Xe3 support for the Panther Lake processors while beginning work on Xe3P. This week, a set of 22 patches was submitted to the dri-devel mailing list, as reported by Phoronix, to establish the foundational framework for Xe3P within the Linux kernel driver.
For the moment, these changes are limited to the kernel space, which manages low-level hardware communication. No code for Xe3P has yet been added to user-space drivers in the Mesa 3D graphics stack, including the Iris Gallium3D driver for OpenGL and the ANV driver for Vulkan. The preliminary patches are expected to appear in the Linux v6.19 kernel, slated as the first stable release of 2026. However, achieving full support for Xe3P and all its features will require multiple additional kernel and Mesa release cycles.
Xe3P is anticipated to power consumer products such as Nova Lake-S processors and Arc Celestial discrete graphics cards. In the data center realm, Intel has confirmed that the recently announced Crescent Island will utilize the Xe3P architecture.
KitGuru comments on the development: "How will Xe3P compare to Intel's current solutions? Can it finally bring Intel's discrete gaming GPUs to higher market segments?"