Intel has updated its Compute Runtime to support its upcoming Rocket Lake desktop processors and Intel DG1 graphics based on its Xe GPU architecture. Overall, this can be seen as a sign that things are moving at a steady pace with Intel’s 11th generation core CPUs and discrete graphics.
Intel Core Rocket Lake and the DG1 Xe GPU now have Linux support
“The Intel Graphics Compute Runtime for oneAPI Level Zero and OpenCL Driver is an open-source project that provides compute API support (Level Zero, OpenCL) for Intel’s graphics hardware architectures (HD Graphics, Xe),” Intel said.
Intel’s additional support appears in GitHub for version 20.37.17906. If you scroll down to the “Major Changes” section, you’ll see a list of “DG1 devices added” and “Rocket Lake support added”. As with DG1, there are some new device IDs. This is remarkable, although the additional support for Rocket Lake is perhaps the most interesting.
The Xe architecture has already materialized in Tiger Lake laptop chips. Rocket Lake, on the other hand, has not yet officially appeared. Although expected to build on Intel’s 14-nanometer improved manufacturing process, Rocket Lake is the code name for the company’s next-generation CPUs with Gen12 graphics.
Based on past leaks, Rocket Lake is expected to use the same LGA1200 socket as Comet Lake-S. It is also expected that Rocket Lake will eventually bring PCIe 4.0 support to Intel’s desktop platform, which will bring parity with AMD in this regard. However, Rocket Lake is not yet expected to support DDR5.
It will be interesting to see how the performance would look like. An earlier rumor was that Rocket Lake offered a 20% IPC win over Skylake, although we will have to wait and see.