Description
I am testing an Intel Arc A750 8GB graphics card using the open source i915 / Xe Intel GPU kernel driver (see related: #695 for B580):
It requires external PCIe power, so needs to be used with a suitable power supply. Intel seems to only officially support Ubuntu 22.04, and by default only AMD64/x86_64... Here's the full Ubuntu installation guide for Arc drivers.
Not sure if I can get it to work at all on Debian, and I also haven't confirmed if aarch64/ARM64 support is at all existing, planned, or not planned. Would like to find out, because I'll soon have another ARM64 system to test this in with a bit more firepower.
See also: Intel Arc Graphics A750/A770 Performance Ahead Of Linux 6.2 + Mesa 23.0 — it may be possible if the Pi OS kernel is up to 6.2 (it was 6.1 last time I checked) to compile the driver and see what happens.
Current Status and setup instructions
Last updated: Jan 21, 2025
It looks like at least some of the Arc cards are functional if you compile the 6.12 kernel (the next LTS release, which is coming to the Pi soon), and apply one or two small changes.
Current steps to get this card working with Pi OS Bookworm
- Clone the Raspberry Pi Linux kernel patching the next Raspberry Pi
6.12.ykernel tree with my GPU-enablement patch (or just check out my branch directly). - Before compiling the kernel (in the next step), run
make menuconfigand select the options:
1. Kernel Features > Page Size > 4 KB (for Box86 and general driver compatibility)
2. Device Drivers > Graphics support > Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) > Intel Xe Graphics
3. Device Drivers > Graphics support > Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) > Intel Xe Graphics > Force probe xe for selected Intel hardware IDs >*(enter*manually for the value) - Recompile the kernel following Raspberry Pi's instructions
- Install updated Intel i915 firmware (see instruction below)
- Modify
/boot/firmware/config.txt:
1. Comment out thedtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3dline
2. (Optional) Add the linedtparam=pciex1_gen=3to the end - Reboot the Pi with the card attached using an appropriate PCIe riser and external ATX power supply.
Install Firmware
# i915 firmware
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/firmware/i915 && cd /usr/lib/firmware/i915
sudo wget -o - -O dg2_guc_70.bin -q https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain/i915/dg2_guc_70.bin
Check if working
Confirm everything is working by plugging a monitor into the graphics card; then confirm the card's GPU is in use by running glxinfo -B (part of the mesa-utils package), for example:
$ sudo apt install -y mesa-utils
$ DISPLAY=:0 glxinfo -B
name of display: :0
MESA: warning: Support for this platform is experimental with Xe KMD, bug reports may be ignored.
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
Device: Mesa Intel(R) Arc(tm) A750 Graphics (DG2) (0x56a1)
Version: 24.3.2
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 8128MB
...
(Prepend DISPLAY=:0 if running commands over SSH.)
Debugging / Troubleshooting
- To get full debug output in
dmesg, adddrm.debug=0xeto/boot/firmware/cmdline.txt - Currently, I had to compile a newer version of Mesa to get the labwc desktop environment to load
- With the newer Mesa (24.3.2), I am seeing many screen glitches / artifacts, but at least I can sorta use the system.
For the source and more details of the patch in progress, see: