Along with [1]other exciting Intel kernel graphics driver updates submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window, another batch of drm-intel-next code was sent out today to DRM-Next. This pull request is mostly around bug fixing and other low-level work but it does provide a new "dirty rect" feature being introduced with next-gen Intel Xe3 graphics.

This "dirty rect" feature for next-gen Xe3 Panther Lake graphics and Celestial discrete graphics is around allowing frame-buffer compression (FBC) on dirty rectangles. Dirty rectangles are the portions of the screen/frame-buffer that have been modified. The patch adding the support for this new Xe3 GPU feature explains:

"Initial patchset to support dirty rect capability for FBC in Xe3. This is the initial design suggestion for the feedback. This is for non PSR cases.

...

drm/i915/xe3: add dirty rect support for FBC

Dirty rectangle feature allows FBC to recompress a subsection of a frame. When this feature is enabled, display will read the scan lines between dirty rectangle start line and dirty rectangle end line in subsequent frames."

This FBC dirty rectangle support for Xe3 is part of today's drm-intel-next pull for Linux 6.15. This feature should help with bandwidth savings and energy efficiency. There is also some display updates, code refactoring, and a number of different fixes.

See [2]this pull request for the likely final batch of Intel kernel graphics driver feature updates going into the Linux 6.15 merge window later in March.

The open-source Xe3 graphics driver enablement with a focus on Panther Lake integrated graphics have been ongoing for a while and given the flow of new feature patches remains ongoing. If all goes well this open-source Linux driver support for Xe3/PTL will be all buttoned up by the back-half of the year prior to the next-gen Core Ultra laptops shipping.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Xe-SVM-For-Linux-6.15

[2] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2025-March/495152.html