Intel
Developer Information
- TODO file for i965 3D driver projects.
- TODO file for i915 3D driver projects.
- IntelPerformanceTuning.
- IntelCodenames - a mapping of codenames, generations, marketing names, and processors.
Status
Supported chipsets:
- i810
- i810-dc100
- i810e
- i810e2
- i815
- i815e
- i830G
- i845G
- i852/855
- i865G
- i915G/i915GM/i915GMS
- i945G/i945GM (includes GMA 950, GMA 3000, GMA 3100)
i965G, G3x, G4x (includes GMA X3000, GMA X3100, GMA X3500, GMA X4500) Unsupported chips:
i740. Intel claimed to have a Software Developer's Manual (order number 290617) available for this chip, but it is not posted on the website anywhere. The datasheet is available here, but this is a feature list only and is not useful for programming a DRI driver. The i740 appears to be the i810 minus multitexturing and anisotropic mipmap filtering, with slightly different register locations.
i752. Brief-lived successor to the i740, and may in fact be identical to the i810.
Poulsbo/Moorestown/Cedarview-based SGX chipsets. There are no open-source 3D drivers for SGX chipsets, nor are there specifications available. The kernel has modesetting-only support for this hardware.
Specifications
Specifications for a few Intel chipsets are publicly available on its developer site.
There are complete Programmer's Reference Manuals including register descriptions for the i810 and the i815.
Programmer's Reference Manuals for both generations of the i965 family are available on the Intel driver development site.
For the other chips, have a look at the datasheets for various versions of the Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (eg. for the i830, look at 82830 GMCH-M, etc.).
Here is an attempt to collect information about some IntelRegisters for those chips.
Chip Information
The Intel chipsets can be split into 4 categories at this stage.
- i810/i815 family
- i8xx
- i915/945 family
- i965 family Intel produces motherboard chipsets with and without integrated graphics functionality. The chipsets also commonly allow for an external graphics adapter to be used in-place of the integrated functionality (AGP or PCI-E). The chipsets containing integrated graphics always seem to be have a G in the name. (e.g. 865G, 915G and 945G). These are normally the desktop targeted graphics chips. Later a mobile targeted version is usually released tagged with a GM (i915GM and 945GM). Post the GM series things can be a bit murky, but normally a GMS version of the chip can be released which is also mobile targeted but with maybe less power or more features
i8xx
The i8xx chipset supported AGP graphics cards. The integrated graphics functionality is disabled when an external AGP card is detected. The i8xx used DVO (Digitial Video Out) ports to talk to external chips (TMDS, LVDS and TV-Out). The control interface used i2c. These DVO ports were multiplexed via the AGP connector and could be used by an ADD card. The external chips used on ADD cards were also used by other manufactures to provide functionality on their graphics systems (e.g VIA could use ADD cards, and some radeons had silicon image DVI chips). The i8xx had separate DDC i2c channels for external devices.
| Chipset | Pipes | Analog | DVOs | LVDS | TV-OUT | TMDS (DVI) |
| 830M/MG | 2 | Y | A/B/C | N | N | N |
| 845G/GE | 1 | Y | B/C | N | N | N |
| 852GM | 2 | Y | C | B | N | N |
| 855GM/GME | 2 | Y | B/C | B | N | N |
| 865G | 1 | Y | B/C | N | N | N |
i915/i945
The i915/i945 chipsets support PCI-Express graphics cards. The integrated functionality is disabled when an external PCI-E card is detected. The i9xx use sDVO (Serial Digital Video Out) ports to talk to external chips (TMDS, LVDS and TV-Out). The control interface is the sDVO protocol, which runs on top of a standard i2c link. The sDVO ports are multiplexed with the PCI-Express and can be used via ADD2 or ADD2+ cards. The external chips are currently used with Intel hw only. The i9xx has a point to point connection over i2c to control the external chips, the external chips must switch the i2c bus to allow access to monitor DDC or ADD2 PROMs.
| Chipset | Pipes | Analog | DVOs | LVDS | TV-OUT | TMDS (DVI) |
| 915G | 2 | Y | B/C | N | N | N |
| 915GM/GMS | 2 | Y | B/C | Y | Y | N |
| 945G | 2 | Y | B/C | N | N | N |
t Also GMA 3000 / 3100 (without "X") are in this family.
i965
i965 is a new graphics architecture, present in chipsets 965G, G31, G33, G35 and the new G4x series. It goes by the marketing names GMA X3000, GMA X3100, GMA X3500 and GMA X4500, ie. everything with an "X" in it.
They support OpenGL 2.0, ie. full GLSL shading language support etc. is available in Mesa 7.0.4 release and above.