Intel

Intel

Alice has one generic Intel module and one preset.

Item	Name	File
Module	self.custom.hardwareModules.hardwareIntel	modules/hardware/drivers/intel.nix
Preset	self.custom.hardwareModules.intelSettings	modules/hardware/settings/intel.nix

The module declares options in hardware.alice.intel. Serpentine uses the preset.

GPU generations

Set gpu.generation to the tier of your GPU.

Value	GPUs	VA-API drivers
pre-broadwell	Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell (1st to 4th gen)	i965 only
legacy	Broadwell to Comet Lake (5th to 10th gen), including Coffee Lake UHD 620/630	iHD (primary) and i965 (fallback)
xe	Iris Xe, Arc, 12th gen and newer	iHD and vpl-gpu-rt (QSV)

The default is xe. The legacy tier keeps i965 because it works better in some browsers.

Options

Option	Default	Effect
gpu.enable	false	Turns on the Intel GPU module.
gpu.generation	"xe"	Picks the driver tier. See above.
gpu.earlyKms	true	Loads i915 in the initrd.
gpu.enableGuC	true on xe, else false	Adds i915.enable_guc=3 to the kernel parameters.
gpu.hybridCodec	false	Builds intel-vaapi-driver with hybrid codec support. Needs legacy.
gpu.openclNeo	false	Adds the Intel NEO OpenCL and Level Zero runtime. Needs xe.
gpu.openclLegacy	false	Adds intel-compute-runtime-legacy1 for OpenCL. Needs legacy.
cpu.enable	false	Turns on the Intel CPU module and CPU microcode updates.
cpu.pstate	true	Adds intel_pstate=active to the kernel parameters.

What the module sets

• services.xserver.videoDrivers is ["modesetting"].
• hardware.graphics gets 64-bit and 32-bit packages for your tier. Steam and Wine use the 32-bit packages.
• LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME is i965 on pre-broadwell and iHD on the other tiers. If a browser has video problems, set it to i965 for the session.
• hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware is true (as a default).
• Vulkan on Intel uses ANV from Mesa. It needs no extra package. See hardware.alice.vulkan in Design.

Assertions

The build stops with a message when you combine options in the wrong way:

• openclNeo needs generation = "xe".
• openclLegacy needs generation = "legacy".
• hybridCodec needs generation = "legacy".

The preset

intelSettings imports hardwareIntel and vulkan, and sets these values:

hardware.alice.intel = {
  gpu = {
    enable = true;
    generation = "legacy";
    openclLegacy = true;
  };
  cpu.enable = true;
};
hardware.alice.vulkan = {
  enable = true;
  tools = true;
};

Use the module on a newer machine

Import the module in your host and set the options. This example fits a 12th gen CPU:

{
  imports = [self.custom.hardwareModules.hardwareIntel];
  hardware.alice.intel = {
    gpu = {
      enable = true;
      generation = "xe";
      openclNeo = true;
    };
    cpu.enable = true;
  };
}

If more than one host needs the same values, make a preset in modules/hardware/settings/. See Design.