In addition to [1]Intel upstreaming the Xe3 graphics firmware needed for upcoming Panther Lake SoCs to linux-firmware.git so those firmware binaries can get picked up by Linux distributions ahead of Panther Lake laptops shipping, Intel also upstreamed fan control firmware as a first for their graphics card efforts.

It turns out Intel graphics cards at least for the recent Arc B-Series "Battlemage" rely on their own dedicated firmware binaries.

The "fan_control_8086_e20b_8086_1100.bin" file was added to the Intel Xe driver directory in linux-firmware.git as the first time they are shipping updated fan control firmware for their graphics hardware. Typically the fan control functionality is paired within the power management firmware or with some hardware just controlled by the kernel driver directly.

[2]The linux-firmware commit doesn't note what has changed in this fan control firmware for Battlemage graphics cards besides the fact that it's updated.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-PTL-Xe3-GuC-HuC-Firmware

[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=2208e9f56bf22fa43d3968df848e67a0fa51155b