Intel today merged a new patch into the Mesa 23.0 driver to facilitate running Intel OpenGL and Vulkan drivers on non-x86 / x86_64 architecture devices. The purpose of improving this driver is to allow Intel Arc to run on AArch64, POWER, and RISC-V architecture devices.
Intel has spent the past few months working to improve the Linux drivers on non-x86 architectures. Previous development work has focused on kernel drivers, while today's merged patch provides support for OpenGL and Vulkan open-source drivers for non-x86 / x86_64 architectures.
Although most open-source Linux graphics drivers work well on different CPU architectures, due to the nature of the open source and the Linux community, in the case of Intel's graphics driver stack, they have traditionally not required Concerned about non-x86 support.
They were apparently tied to their x86 / x86_64 CPUs in the days of integrated graphics support. But now that they've entered the discrete GPU game with Arc Graphics and their Ponte Vecchio/Max line, it's a whole different paradigm.
With the possibility of installing discrete Intel GPUs on ARM64 servers, RISC-V desktops, and libre POWER9 desktops, their graphics drivers need to address the x86'isms that have built up in their code bases over the years.
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