For those still making use of Intel Sandy Bridge processors from 15 years ago, the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is bringing a fix for an engine reset issue when using the old integrated graphics with [1]Sandy Bridge .

Reported back in February 2025 was [2]a bug report over a GPU hang and reset on a fence error for Sandy Bridge. Intel engineer Sebastian Brzezinka tracked down the issue last month for this kernel bug seen on Sandy Bridge during heartbeat-triggered engine resets. It's a simple one-liner for new code to the i915 DRM driver.

That fix was sent out today via [3]drm-intel-gt-next of new material for Linux 7.2. That more robust fence handling for Sandy Bridge plus some underflow fixes and addressing some false positives from AI scanners round out today's pull request.

The " skip __i915_request_skip() for already signaled requests " Intel driver fix is also marked for back-porting to the Linux kernel stable series so ultimately should get picked up in due course for existing stable Linux kernel series, if you are still using Sandy Bridge.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Sandy+Bridge

[2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/i915/kernel/-/work_items/13729

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/ahlc1R5bzJvmBLlZ@jlahtine-mobl/T/#u