Intel HD and Iris Graphics

History

Before the introduction of Intel HD Graphics, Intel integrated graphics were built into the motherboard's northbridge, as part of the Intel's Hub Architecture. This included Intel Extreme Graphics and the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator. As part of the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) design, the northbridge was eliminated and graphics processing was moved to the same die with the central processing unit (CPU).

The previous Intel integrated graphics solution, Intel GMA, had a reputation of lacking performance and features, and therefore was not considered to be a good choice for more demanding graphics applications, such as 3D gaming. The performance increases brought by Intel's HD Graphics made the products competitive with integrated graphics adapters made by its rivals, Nvidia and ATI/AMD. Intel HD Graphics, featuring minimal power consumption that is important in laptops, was capable enough that PC manufacturers often stopped offering discrete graphics options in their low-end and mid-range laptop lines.

With the introduction of "Iris Graphics" and "Iris Pro Graphics" lines, the "HD Graphics" name has been relegated to denoting Intel's lower-end and mid-range integrated graphics products.

Westmere

In January 2010, Clarkdale and Arrandale processors with Ironlake graphics were released, and branded as Celeron, Pentium, or Core with HD Graphics:

Sandy Bridge

In January 2011, the Sandy Bridge processors were released, introducing the "second generation" HD Graphics:

Celeron and Pentium have Intel HD, while Core i3 and above have either HD 2000 or HD 3000. HD Graphics 2000 and 3000 include hardware video encoding and HD postprocessing effects.

Ivy Bridge

On 24 April 2012, Ivy Bridge was released, introducing the "third generation" of Intel's HD graphics:

Celeron and Pentium have Intel HD, while Core i3 and above have either HD 2500 or HD 4000. HD Graphics 2500 and 4000 include hardware video encoding and HD postprocessing effects.

For some low-power mobile CPUs there is limited video decoding support, while none of the desktop CPUs have this limitation.

Haswell

On 12 September 2012, Haswell CPUs were announced, with four models of integrated GPUs:

The 128 MB of eDRAM is on the same package as the CPU, but in a separate die manufactured in a different process. Intel refers to this as a Level 4 cache that is available to both CPU and GPU, naming it Crystalwell. Linux support for this eDRAM is expected in kernel version 3.12, by making the drm/i915 driver aware and capable of using it.

Integrated Iris Pro Graphics was adopted by Apple for their late-2013 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops (with Retina Display), which for the first time in the history of the series did not have discrete graphics cards, although only for the low-end model. It was also included on the late-2013 21.5-inch iMac.

Broadwell

In November 2013, it was announced that Broadwell-K desktop processors (aimed at enthusiasts) will also carry Iris Pro Graphics.

The following models of integrated GPU are announced for Broadwell processors:

Skylake

The Skylake line of processors, launched in August 2015, retires VGA support, while supporting multi-monitor setups of up to three monitors connected via HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 or Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) 1.3 interfaces.

The following models of integrated GPU are available or announced for the Skylake processors:

Kaby Lake

New Features: fast 4K UHD, VP9 and more H.265, "360-degree clips up to 15 times faster"

Intel Insider

Beginning with Sandy Bridge, the graphics processors include a form of digital copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) called Intel Insider, which allows decryption of protected media within the processor. Previously there was a similar technology called Protected Audio Video Path (PAVP).

Intel Quick Sync Video

Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's hardware video encoding and decoding technology, which is integrated into some of the Intel CPUs. The name "Quick Sync" refers to the use case of quickly transcoding ("syncing") a video from, for example, a DVD or Blu-ray Disc to a format appropriate to, for example, a smartphone. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011.

Graphics Virtualization Technology

Graphics Virtualization Technology was announced 1 January 2014 and is supported by Iris Pro GPUs.

Ivy Bridge

HD 2500 and HD 4000 GPUs in Ivy Bridge CPUs are advertised as supporting three active monitors, but many users have found that this does not work for them due to the chipsets only supporting two active monitors in many common configurations. The reason for this is that the chipsets only include two phase-locked loops (PLLs); a PLL generates a pixel clock at a certain frequency which is used to sync the timings of data being transferred between the GPU and displays.

Therefore, three simultaneously active monitors can only be achieved by a hardware configuration that requires only two unique pixel clocks, such as:

Haswell

ASRock Z87- and H87-based motherboards support three displays simultaneously. Asus H87-based motherboards are also advertised to support three independent monitors at once.

Capabilities

OpenCL 2.1 and 2.2 possible with software Update on OpenCL 2.0 Hardware (Broadwell+) with Future software updates.

While Mesa does support Direct3D 9.3, this is only implemented for Gallium3D-style drivers and not for the Mesa Intel driver.

Capabilities (GPU video acceleration)

Intel developed a dedicated SIP core which implements multiple video decompression and compression algorithms branded Intel Quick Sync Video. Some are implemented completely, some only partially.

Documentation

Intel releases programming manuals for most of Intel HD Graphics devices via its Open Source Technology Center. This allows various open source enthusiasts and hackers to contribute to driver development, and port drivers to various operating systems, without the need for reverse engineering.