intel(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual intel(4)
NAME
intel - Intel integrated graphics chipsets
SYNOPSIS
Section "Device"
Identifier "devname"
Driver "intel"
...
EndSection
DESCRIPTION
intel is an Xorg driver for Intel integrated graphics chipsets. The
driver supports depths 8, 15, 16 and 24. All visual types are supported
in depth 8. For the i810/i815 other depths support the TrueColor and
DirectColor visuals. For the i830M and later, only the TrueColor visual
is supported for depths greater than 8. The driver supports hardware
accelerated 3D via the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), but only
in depth 16 for the i810/i815 and depths 16 and 24 for the 830M and
later.
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
intel supports the i810, i810-DC100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 852GM,
855GM, 865G, 915G, 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 965G, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 945GME,
G33, Q33, Q35, G35, GM45, G45, Q45, G43, G41 chipsets, Pineview-M in
Atom N400 series, Pineview-D in Atom D400/D500 series, Intel(R) HD
Graphics, Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics, Intel(R) Iris(TM) Pro Graphics.
CONFIGURATION DETAILS
Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details. This
section only covers configuration details specific to this driver.
The Intel 8xx and 9xx families of integrated graphics chipsets have a
unified memory architecture meaning that system memory is used as video
RAM. For the i810 and i815 family of chipsets, operating system support
for allocating system memory is required in order to use this driver.
For the 830M and later, this is required in order for the driver to use
more video RAM than has been pre-allocated at boot time by the BIOS.
This is usually achieved with an "agpgart" or "agp" kernel driver.
Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris have such kernel drivers
available.
By default, the i810/i815 will use 8 MB of system memory for graphics if
AGP allocable memory is < 128 MB, 16 MB if < 192 MB or 24 MB if higher.
Use the VideoRam option to change the default value.
For the 830M and later, the driver will automatically size its memory
allocation according to the features it will support. Therefore, the
VideoRam option, which in the past had been necessary to allow more than
some small amount of memory to be allocated, is now ignored.
The following driver Options are supported
Option "ColorKey" "integer"
This sets the default pixel value for the YUV video overlay key.
Default: undefined.
Option "DRI" "string"
Disable or enable DRI support. A driver name to use can be pro-
vided instead of simple boolean value, which will be passed to
the GL implementation for it to load the appropriate backend. Al-
ternatively the maximum level of DRI to enable (e.g. "1", "2" or
"3") can be specified.
Default: All levels of DRI are enabled for configurations where
it is supported.
The following driver Options are supported for the i810 and i815
chipsets:
Option "CacheLines" "integer"
This allows the user to change the amount of graphics memory used
for 2D acceleration and video when XAA acceleration is enabled.
Decreasing this amount leaves more for 3D textures. Increasing
it can improve 2D performance at the expense of 3D performance.
Default: depends on the resolution, depth, and available video
memory. The driver attempts to allocate space for at 3 screen-
fuls of pixmaps plus an HD-sized XV video. The default used for
a specific configuration can be found by examining the Xorg log
file.
Option "DDC" "boolean"
Disable or enable DDC support.
Default: enabled.
Option "Dac6Bit" "boolean"
Enable or disable 6-bits per RGB for 8-bit modes.
Default: 8-bits per RGB for 8-bit modes.
Option "XvMCSurfaces" "integer"
This option enables XvMC. The integer parameter specifies the
number of surfaces to use. Valid values are 6 and 7.
Default: XvMC is disabled.
VideoRam integer
This option specifies the amount of system memory to use for
graphics, in KB.
The default is 8192 if AGP allocable memory is < 128 MB, 16384 if
< 192 MB, 24576 if higher. DRI require at least a value of 16384.
Higher values may give better 3D performance, at expense of
available system memory.
Option "Accel" "boolean"
Enable or disable acceleration.
Default: acceleration is enabled.
The following driver Options are supported for the 830M and later
chipsets:
Option "Accel" "boolean"
Enable or disable acceleration.
Default: acceleration is enabled.
Option "Present" "boolean"
Enable use of hardware counters and flow control for the Present
extension.
Default: Enabled
Option "AccelMethod" "string"
Select acceleration method. There are a couple of backends
available for accelerating the DDX. "UXA" (Unified Acceleration
Architecture) is the mature backend that was introduced to sup-
port the GEM driver model. It is in the process of being super-
seded by "SNA" (Sandybridge's New Acceleration). Until that
process is complete, the ability to choose which backend to use
remains for backwards compatibility. In addition, there are a
pair of sub-options to limit the acceleration for debugging use.
Specify "off" or "none" to disable all acceleration, or "blt" to
disable render acceleration and only use the BLT engine.
Default: use SNA (render acceleration)
Option "TearFree" "boolean"
Disable or enable TearFree updates. This option forces X to per-
form all rendering to a backbuffer prior to updating the actual
display. It requires an extra memory allocation the same size as
a framebuffer, the occasional extra copy, and requires Damage
tracking. Thus enabling TearFree requires more memory and is
slower (reduced throughput) and introduces a small amount of out-
put latency, but it should not impact input latency. However, the
update to the screen is then performed synchronously with the
vertical refresh of the display so that the entire update is com-
pleted before the display starts its refresh. That is only one
frame is ever visible, preventing an unsightly tear between two
visible and differing frames. Note that this replicates what the
compositing manager should be doing, however TearFree will redi-
rect the compositor updates (and those of fullscreen games) di-
rectly on to the scanout thus incurring no additional overhead in
the composited case. Also note that not all compositing managers
prevent tearing, and if the outputs are rotated, there will still
be tearing without TearFree enabled.
Default: TearFree is disabled.
Option "ReprobeOutputs" "boolean"
Disable or enable rediscovery of connected displays during server
startup. As the kernel driver loads it scans for connected dis-
plays and configures a console spanning those outputs. When the X
server starts, we then take the list of connected displays and
framebuffer layout and use that for the initial configuration.
Sometimes, not all displays are correctly detected by the kernel
and so it is useful in a few circumstances for X to force the
kernel to reprobe all displays when it starts. To make the X
server recheck the status of connected displays, set the
"ReprobeOutputs" option to true. Please do file a bug for any
circumstances which require this workaround.
Default: reprobing is disabled for a faster startup.
Option "VideoKey" "integer"
This is the same as the "ColorKey" option described above. It is
provided for compatibility with most other drivers.
Option "XvPreferOverlay" "boolean"
Make hardware overlay be the first XV adaptor. The overlay be-
haves incorrectly in the presence of compositing, but some prefer
it due to it syncing to vblank in the absence of compositing.
While most XV-using applications have options to select which XV
adaptor to use, this option can be used to place the overlay
first for applications which don't have options for selecting
adaptors.
Default: Textured video adaptor is preferred.
Option "Backlight" "string"
Override the probed backlight control interface. Sometimes the
automatically selected backlight interface may not correspond to
the correct, or simply most useful, interface available on the
system. This allows you to override that choice by specifying the
entry under /sys/class/backlight to use.
Default: Automatic selection.
Option "CustomEDID" "string"
Override the probed EDID on particular outputs. Sometimes the
manufacturer supplied EDID is corrupt or lacking a few usable
modes and supplying a corrected EDID may be easier than specify-
ing every modeline. This option allows to pass the path to load
an EDID from per output. The format is a comma separated string
of output:path pairs, e.g.
DP1:/path/to/dp1.edid,DP2:/path/to/dp2.edid
Default: No override, use manufacturer supplied EDIDs.
Option "FallbackDebug" "boolean"
Enable printing of debugging information on acceleration fall-
backs to the server log.
Default: Disabled
Option "DebugFlushBatches" "boolean"
Flush the batch buffer after every single operation.
Default: Disabled
Option "DebugFlushCaches" "boolean"
Include an MI_FLUSH at the end of every batch buffer to force
data to be flushed out of cache and into memory before the com-
pletion of the batch.
Default: Disabled
Option "DebugWait" "boolean"
Wait for the completion of every batch buffer before continuing,
i.e. perform synchronous rendering.
Default: Disabled
Option "HWRotation" "boolean"
Override the use of native hardware rotation and force the use of
software, but GPU accelerated where possible, rotation. On some
platforms the hardware can scanout directly into a rotated output
bypassing the intermediate rendering and extra allocations re-
quired for software implemented rotation (i.e. native rotation
uses less resources, is quicker and uses less power). This allows
you to disable the native rotation in case of errors.
Default: Enabled (use hardware rotation)
Option "VSync" "boolean"
This option controls the use of commands to synchronise rendering
with the vertical refresh of the display. Some rendering commands
have the option to be performed in a "tear-free" fashion by
stalling the GPU to wait for the display to be outside of the re-
gion to be updated. This slows down all rendering, and histori-
cally has been the source of many GPU hangs.
Default: enabled.
Option "PageFlip" "boolean"
This option controls the use of commands to flip the scanout ad-
dress on a VBlank. This is used by glXSwapBuffers to efficiently
perform the back-to-front exchange at the end of a frame without
incurring the penalty of a copy, or stalling the render pipeline
(the flip is performed asynchronrously to the render command
stream by the display engine). However, it has historically been
the source of many GPU hangs.
Default: enabled.
Option "SwapbuffersWait" "boolean"
This option controls the behavior of glXSwapBuffers and glXCopy-
SubBufferMESA calls by GL applications. If enabled, the calls
will avoid tearing by making sure the display scanline is outside
of the area to be copied before the copy occurs. If disabled, no
scanline synchronization is performed, meaning tearing will
likely occur.
Default: enabled.
Option "TripleBuffer" "boolean"
This option enables the use of a third buffer for page-flipping.
The third buffer allows applications to run at vrefresh rates
even if they occasionally fail to swapbuffers on time. The effect
of such missed swaps is the output jitters between 60fps and
30fps, and in the worst case appears frame-locked to 30fps. The
disadvantage of triple buffering is that there is an extra frame
of latency, due to the pre-rendered frame sitting in the swap
queue, between input and any display update.
Default: enabled.
Option "Tiling" "boolean"
This option controls whether memory buffers for Pixmaps are allo-
cated in tiled mode. In most cases (especially for complex ren-
dering), tiling dramatically improves performance.
Default: enabled.
Option "LinearFramebuffer" "boolean"
This option controls whether the memory for the scanout (also
known as the front or frame buffer) is allocated in linear mem-
ory. A tiled framebuffer is required for power conservation fea-
tures, but for certain system configurations you may wish to
override this and force a linear layout.
Default: disabled
Option "RelaxedFencing" "boolean"
This option controls whether we attempt to allocate the minimal
amount of memory required for the buffers. The reduction in work-
ing set has a substantial improvement on system performance. How-
ever, this has been demonstrate to be buggy on older hardware
(845-865 and 915-945, but ok on PineView and later) so on those
chipsets defaults to off.
Default: Enabled for G33 (includes PineView), and later, class
machines.
Option "XvMC" "boolean"
Enable XvMC driver. Current support MPEG2 MC on 915/945 and G33
series. User should provide absolute path to libIntelXvMC.so in
XvMCConfig file.
Default: Disabled.
Option "Throttle" "boolean"
This option controls whether the driver periodically waits for
pending drawing operations to complete. Throttling ensures that
the GPU does not lag too far behind the CPU and thus noticeable
delays in user responsible at the cost of throughput performance.
Default: enabled.
Option "HotPlug" "boolean"
This option controls whether the driver automatically notifies
applications when monitors are connected or disconnected.
Default: enabled.
Option "Virtualheads" "integer"
This option controls specifies the number of fake outputs to cre-
ate in addition to the normal outputs detected on your hardware.
These outputs cannot be assigned to the regular displays attached
to the GPU, but do otherwise act as any other xrandr output and
share a portion of the regular framebuffer. One use case for
these extra heads is for extending your desktop onto a discrete
GPU using the Bumblebee project. However, the recommendation here
is to use PRIME instead to create a single Xserver that can ad-
dresses and coordinate between multiple GPUs.
Default: 0
Option "ZaphodHeads" "string"
Specify the randr output(s) to use with zaphod mode for a partic-
ular driver instance. If you set this option you must use it
with all instances of the driver. By default, each head is as-
signed only one CRTC (which limits using multiple outputs with
that head to cloned mode). CRTC can be manually assigned to indi-
vidual heads by preceding the output names with a comma delimited
list of pipe numbers followed by a colon. Note that different
pipes may be limited in their functionality and some outputs may
only work with different pipes.
For example:
Option "ZaphodHeads" "LVDS1,VGA1"
will assign xrandr outputs LVDS1 and VGA1 to this instance of the
driver.
Option "ZaphodHeads" "0,2:HDMI1,DP2"
will assign xrandr outputs HDMI1 and DP2 and CRTCs 0 and 2 to
this instance of the driver.
OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
On 830M and better chipsets, the driver supports runtime configuration
of detected outputs. You can use the xrandr tool to control outputs on
the command line as follows:
xrandr --output output --set property value
Note that you may need to quote property and value arguments that con-
tain spaces. Each output listed below may have one or more properties
associated with it (like a binary EDID block if one is found). Some
outputs have unique properties which are described below. See the "MUL-
TIHEAD CONFIGURATIONS" section below for additional information.
VGA
VGA output port (typically exposed via an HD15 connector).
LVDS
Low Voltage Differential Signalling output (typically a laptop LCD
panel). Available properties:
BACKLIGHT - current backlight level (adjustable)
By adjusting the BACKLIGHT property, the brightness on the LVDS
output can be adjusted. In some cases, this property may be un-
available (for example if your platform uses an external micro-
controller to control the backlight).
scaling mode - control LCD panel scaling mode
When the currently selected display mode differs from the native
panel resolution, various scaling options are available. These
include
Center Simply center the image on-screen without scaling. This is
the only scaling mode that guarantees a one-to-one corre-
spondence between native and displayed pixels, but some
portions of the panel may be unused (so-called "letterbox-
ing").
Full aspect
Scale the image as much as possible while preserving as-
pect ratio. Pixels may not be displayed one-to-one (there
may be some blurriness). Some portions of the panel may be
unused if the aspect ratio of the selected mode does not
match that of the panel.
Full Scale the image to the panel size without regard to aspect
ratio. This is the only mode which guarantees that every
pixel of the panel will be used. But the displayed image
may be distorted by stretching either horizontally or ver-
tically, and pixels may not be displayed one-to-one (there
may be some blurriness).
The precise names of these options may differ depending on the kernel
video driver, (but the functionality should be similar). See the output
of xrandr --prop for a list of currently available scaling modes.
TV
Integrated TV output. Available properties include:
BOTTOM, RIGHT, TOP, LEFT - margins
Adjusting these properties allows you to control the placement of
your TV output buffer on the screen. The options with the same
name can also be set in xorg.conf with integer value.
BRIGHTNESS - TV brightness, range 0-255
Adjust TV brightness, default value is 128.
CONTRAST - TV contrast, range 0-255
Adjust TV contrast, default value is 1.0 in chipset specific for-
mat.
SATURATION - TV saturation, range 0-255
Adjust TV saturation, default value is 1.0 in chipset specific
format.
HUE - TV hue, range 0-255
Adjust TV hue, default value is 0.
TV_FORMAT - output standard
This property allows you to control the output standard used on
your TV output port. You can select between NTSC-M, NTSC-443,
NTSC-J, PAL-M, PAL-N, and PAL.
TV_Connector - connector type
This config option should be added to xorg.conf TV monitor's sec-
tion, it allows you to force the TV output connector type, which
bypass load detect and TV will always be taken as connected. You
can select between S-Video, Composite and Component.
TMDS-1
First DVI SDVO output
TMDS-2
Second DVI SDVO output
TMDS-1 , TMDS-2 , HDMI-1 , HDMI-2
DVI/HDMI outputs. Available common properties include:
BROADCAST_RGB - method used to set RGB color range
Adjusting this property allows you to set RGB color range on each
channel in order to match HDTV requirement(default 0 for full
range). Setting 1 means RGB color range is 16-235, 0 means RGB
color range is 0-255 on each channel. (Full range is 0-255, not
16-235)
SDVO and DVO TV outputs are not supported by the driver at this time.
See xorg.conf(5) for information on associating Monitor sections with
these outputs for configuration. Associating Monitor sections with each
output can be helpful if you need to ignore a specific output, for exam-
ple, or statically configure an extended desktop monitor layout.
MULTIHEAD CONFIGURATIONS
The number of independent outputs is dictated by the number of CRTCs (in
X parlance) a given chip supports. Most recent Intel chips have two
CRTCs, meaning that two separate framebuffers can be displayed simulta-
neously, in an extended desktop configuration. If a chip supports more
outputs than it has CRTCs (say local flat panel, VGA and TV in the case
of many outputs), two of the outputs will have to be "cloned", meaning
that they display the same framebuffer contents (or one displays a sub-
set of another's framebuffer if the modes aren't equal).
You can use the "xrandr" tool, or various desktop utilities, to change
your output configuration at runtime. To statically configure your out-
puts, you can use the "Monitor-<type>" options along with additional
monitor sections in your xorg.conf to create your screen topology. The
example below puts the VGA output to the right of the builtin laptop
screen, both running at 1024x768.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Laptop FooBar Internal Display"
Option "Position" "0 0"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Some Random CRT"
Option "Position" "1024 0"
Option "RightOf" "Laptop FoodBar Internal Display"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Driver "intel"
Option "monitor-LVDS" "Laptop FooBar Internal Display"
Option "monitor-VGA" "Some Random CRT"
EndSection
TEXTURED VIDEO ATTRIBUTES
The driver supports the following X11 Xv attributes for Textured Video.
You can use the "xvattr" tool to query/set those attributes at runtime.
XV_SYNC_TO_VBLANK
XV_SYNC_TO_VBLANK is used to control whether textured adapter synchro-
nizes the screen update to the vblank to eliminate tearing. It is a
Boolean attribute with values of 0 (never sync) or 1 (always sync). An
historic value of -1 (sync for large windows only) will now be inter-
preted as 1, (since the current approach for sync is not costly even
with small video windows).
XV_BRIGHTNESS
XV_CONTRAST
REPORTING BUGS
The xf86-video-intel driver is part of the X.Org and Freedesktop.org um-
brella projects. Details on bug reporting can be found at
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/documentation/how-report-bugs. Mailing
lists are also commonly used to report experiences and ask questions
about configuration and other topics. See lists.freedesktop.org for
more information (the xorg@lists.freedesktop.org mailing list is the
most appropriate place to ask X.Org and driver related questions).
SEE ALSO
Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), Xserver(1), X(7)
AUTHORS
Authors include: Keith Whitwell, and also Jonathan Bian, Matthew J Sot-
tek, Jeff Hartmann, Mark Vojkovich, Alan Hourihane, H. J. Lu. 830M and
845G support reworked for XFree86 4.3 by David Dawes and Keith Whitwell.
852GM, 855GM, and 865G support added by David Dawes and Keith Whitwell.
915G, 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 965G, 965Q and 946GZ support added by Alan
Hourihane and Keith Whitwell. Lid status support added by Alan Houri-
hane. Textured video support for 915G and later chips, RandR 1.2 and
hardware modesetting added by Eric Anholt and Keith Packard. EXA and
Render acceleration added by Wang Zhenyu. TV out support added by Zou
Nan Hai and Keith Packard. 965GM, G33, Q33, and Q35 support added by
Wang Zhenyu.
X Version 11 xf86-video-intel 2.99.917 intel(4)
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