Intel® Embedded Graphics Drivers (IEGD) and Intel® Embedded Media Graphics Driver (Intel® EMGD) are two separate media and graphics drivers for embedded usage; Intel® EMGD is not a follow-on/next generation driver to IEGD.

IEGD is a group of drivers that support a broad range of operating systems and chipsets. Please refer to each driver’s release notes, feature matrix, and product brief for the list of Intel® IEGD supported products and operating systems as it is different than Intel® EMGD.

The following are supported by the IEGD driver only: The Intel® Atom™ processor 400 and 500 series (CPU+GPU), Intel® Q45/G45/G41 Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® GM45/GL40/GS45 Express Chipset, Intel® Q35 Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® GLE960 Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® GME965 Express Chipset, Intel® Q965 Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® 945GME Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® 945GSE Express Chipset, Intel® 945G Express Chipset, Mobile Intel® 915GME Express Chipset, Intel® 915GV Express Chipset, and Mobile Intel® 910GMLE Express Chipset.

Intel® EMGD should be used to support designs based on Intel Atom™ Processor E6xx series and Intel® System Controller Hub US15W-US15WP-and US15WPT-based designs as Intel® EMGD is a driver that supports different processors and platforms than IEGD.

The Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series is only supported by Intel® EMGD.

No, only the following chipsets and/or SoC are supported with Intel® EMGD:

• Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series-based platform
• Intel® System Controller Hub US15W/US15WP/WPT chipset

Yes. Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver (Intel® EMGD) supports multiple generations of Intel® chipsets and/or SoC over the extended support span of embedded Intel® architecture-based platforms, including Intel® System Controller Hub US15W chipset. However, you must use Configuration EDitor (CED) to configure a driver for each specific chipset or SoC you are using and you may need to update to a later version of Intel® EMGD to be able to build a driver for a newer chipset. Please use the most recent Intel® EMGD release available on the embedded website (intel.com/embedded/edc).

Intel® EMGD supports these Intel® Atom™ processor-based platforms:

• Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series-based platform. This integrates an Intel® Atom™ processor core + GPU + other I/O functions.
• Intel® Atom™ processor Z5xx series (with Intel® System Controller Hub US15W/US15WP/WPT chipset)

The driver fundamentally supports multi-threading. However some functions may not be multi-thread capable. Multi-threading in many instances is dependent on the software (OS/application) as well as the hardware (multi-processor/multi-thread capable) support capability For example, hardware video acceleration is designed as a single pipeline and although you can feed a single stream with multiple videos in it, you cannot interrupt the current thread in order to service another video decode thread/stream.

Roadmaps and future releases are forward-looking plans subject to adjustments for new technologies and customer/market requests. Contact your Intel representative for this information.

Intel® EMGD is designed to enable the customer to configure the driver to support the platform. Intel® EMGD can support many flat panel configurations with custom timings through the detailed timing descriptor (DTD) page of the Configuration EDitor (CED) without driver changes. Please see the user guide.

Yes, Intel® EMGD achieves EDID-like support for EDID-less panels via configuration (using Configuration EDitor (CED), custom-created detailed timing descriptor (DTD) timings and configuration files. More information on how to generate correct Intel® EMGD drivers for EDID-less panels is available in the user guide.

This is not a recommended usage model. The combination is not validated by Intel. The right matching is to use the Intel® EMGD video BIOS together with Intel® EMGD. However, theoretically, Intel® EMGD driver works independently of the VBIOS used. Intel® EMGD provides the capability of using the configuration editor to configure both the OS-level driver and the video BIOS with the same settings. Although Intel® EMGD utilizes settings of the embedded video BIOS, the OS-level drivers are not dependent on the video BIOS settings. This allows users who may not have the ability to update their system firmware/system BIOS to install and use Intel® EMGD with their operating system. Note that the configuration editor will not create settings for the standard desktop video BIOS.

This is not a recommended usage model. Although not always required, it is generally recommended to upgrade both the VBIOS and driver when an update occurs. Intel tests using only the latest of both VBIOS and driver so there may be unexpected results. Often there are code changes that you will want. Sometimes there are new features that require both to be updated. If after updating only the driver you see a negative change in operation, it is recommended that you then update the platform to the newer VBIOS as well. This will allow you to verify that the negative operation of the driver was, or was not, related to some interaction with the older VBIOS.

Multiple locations are available to obtain this technical information:

• www.intel.com/go/emgd – Contains links to download the latest software, Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver Feature Matrix, an electronic FAQ with a detailed glossary, user guide, Intel® EMGD specification update and product brief for the Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver. Additional information can be found on the Download Now, Chipset & OS Compatibility, Features, Frequently Asked Questions, and Overview tabs.
• intel.com/embedded/edc – Search on the keyword “graphics” (upper-right corner of the pages or in the Find-it-Fast search feature found throughout the website).
• Premier.intel.com (QuAD) – Contains a link to download the latest software and the Intel® EMGD Specification Update (Errata), however the site requires a login and password.

Intel® supports our customers through the traditional Intel® Premier Support mechanism via the QuAD application (requires login and password) along with a network of distributors and direct sales staff and field applications engineers.

The Intel® Embedded Community connects you with other embedded developers and Intel technical support personnel. Get questions answered, respond to peers, and share your ideas. For software & tools blogs, resources and discussions visit http://embedded.communities.intel.com/community/en/software

Concrete percentages of Intel® EMGD’s customers using Linux* fluctuate quarterly.

Download data from the Intel Premier Support website (http://premier.intel.com) and from the Intel Embedded Design Center (http://edc.intel.com/Software/Downloads/), more than 60% of Intel® EMGD downloads were installed on Windows*-based systems.

The remaining Intel®¹ EMGD downloads from Intel Premier and Intel EDC were installed on systems using various officially supported Intel® EMGD Linux* distribution packages.

UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. UEFI is a replacement for Legacy System BIOS and is flexible, fast and efficient and has no driver-size constraints. The UEFI pre-boot firmware architecture can either be 32-bit/64-bit/IA64. There is no binary compatibility. Compatibility Support Module (CSM) is used to boot legacy operating systems and operate with legacy option ROMs.

Intel® EMGD supports the EFI Graphics Output Protocol (GOP) driver, which gets merged into the UEFI system pre-boot firmware. The EFI GOP driver supports fast boot capability.

No. The GOP driver (also known as EFI Video driver in some EMGD documentation) is a replacement for legacy video BIOS and enables the use of UEFI pre-boot firmware without Compatibility Support Module (CSM). The Intel® EMGD GOP driver can either be fast boot (speed optimized and platform specific) or generic (platform agnostic for selective platforms).

Here is a quick comparison between GOP and video BIOS:

• GOP - No 64 Kbyte limit. 32-bit protected mode. No need for CSM. Speed optimized (fast boot).
• Video BIOS - 64 Kbyte limit. 16-bit execution. CSM is needed with UEFI system firmware. Performance inferior to GOP CSM. The VBIOS works with both 32- and 64-bit architectures.

No.

The VBIOS Option ROM is linked with the PCI vendor-device ID of the VGA device (typically Bus 0, Device 2, Function 0). This information is embedded in the EFI pre-boot firmware at compile time or merged into the image on the host via the firmware vendor merging utility.

The answer depends upon the EFI Pre-boot firmware setting, if available. If the "PCI as primary" option is available and enabled then the VBIOS option ROM from the Matrox card is activated. If "PCI as primary" is not enabled then the Intel® EMGD VBIOS is activated. Note that there can be only one instance of VBIOS in the platform.

Windows* XP uses the VBIOS via int 10h for displaying the splash screen and any messages until the graphics driver is loaded. Note that during the OS boot process the OS writes to the framebuffer directly, bypassing VBIOS for display purposes. After the graphics driver is loaded, the OS transfers control to VBIOS during full screen DOS mode and during “blue screen” to display the stack information.

Yes, it is supported on the Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx Series-Based Platform.

CED is a Windows* XP*- and Windows* 7 (32-bit) compatible graphical user interface “point and click” application configuration editor for the Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver (Intel® EMGD). It helps make setting up and building the various driver elements including VBIOS much easier.

CED allows easier pre-installation configuration and generation of the drivers and VBIOS.

Note: Although CED can be used to build Intel® EMGD drivers for any target operating systems listed below, the actual CED application runs only under Windows* XP and Windows* 7 (32-bit) on the host platform.

• DOS* Support (IBM PC 2000,* MS 6.22)
• Windows* Embedded CE* 6.0 R3
• Windows* Embedded for Point of Service* (SP3)
• Windows* Embedded Standard 2009*
• Windows* Embedded Standard 7
• Windows* 7
• Windows* XP* (SP3)
• Windows* XP* Embedded* (SP3)
• VBIOS
• EFI-Video-Driver
• EPOG

This condition can occur if CED is not properly shut down. It will leave a semaphore lock file that is designed to prevent multiple copies running. Go to the folder of Intel® EMGD that you are running and open the \workspace folder and delete the “.lock” file you will find there. CED will run properly after you remove that lock file.

You probably have a virus scanner set to operate at run time. CED has many files involved in loading and the virus scan will greatly slow down the launch of CED. You can either live with the delays (safest), or instruct your virus scan program to ignore everything in the Intel® EMGD directory; the latter should be done only at your own risk.

One needs to be sure the chipset’s design specifications is not violated. The minimum standard active resolution is therefore 640 x 480 @ 50Hz vertical refresh which equates to ~20MHz pixel clock. It may be possible to pad the horizontal and vertical blanking and adjust the refresh rate higher to get a lower resolution at the minimum 20 MHz pixel clock, but that is something that needs to be explored with the panel manufacturer.

Theoretically, any timing mode that yields a pixel clock frequency between 20 MHz and 112 MHz mentioned by the respective chipset/processor design spec could be supported by Intel® EMGD. To determine if a particular timing mode can be supported, use the following formula as an example to determine the pixel clock frequency and then determine if it is between 20 MHz and 112 MHz:

Using 720 x 480 @ 60 Hz as an example:
pixel clock frequency = HTOTAL * VTOTAL * Vertical Refresh Rate / 1000000
HACTIVE = 720 pixels / line
HBLANK_BACK PORCH = 10 pixels / line
HBLANK_FRONT PORCH = 128 pixels / line
HTOTAL = HACTIVE + HBLANK_BACK PORCH + HBLANK_FRONT PORCH
HTOTAL = 720 + 10 + 128 = 858 pixels / line
VACTIVE = 480 lines / frame
VBLANK_BACK PORCH = 19 lines / frame
VBLANK_FRONT PORCH =26 lines / frame
VTOTAL = VACTIVE + VBLANK_BACK PORCH + VBLANK_FRONT PORCH
VTOTAL = 480 + 19 + 26 = 525 lines / frame
pixel clock frequency = HTOTAL * VTOTAL * Vertical Refresh Rate / 1000000
pixel clock frequency = 858 pixels / line * 525 lines / frame * 60 Hz / 1000000
pixel clock frequency = 27.027 MHz
pixel clock frequency > 20 MHz so 720 x 480 @ 60 Hz can be supported by Intel® EMGD via the Configuration Editor (CED) application.

Multi-GPU multi-monitor support is defined as allowing the GPU integrated into Intel’s embedded chipset to concurrently function with a discrete GPU solution provided most commonly on an external PCI-Express* graphics card. This allows for generation of unique display timings on greater than two panels or monitors simultaneously.

First, choose an embedded Intel chipset with an integrated LVDS controller. Integrated LVDS ports are available on the following embedded chipsets and/or system-on-a-chip (SoC) are supported with Intel® EMGD:

• Intel® System Controller Hub US15W/US15WP/WPT chipset
• Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series

Second, follow the instructions in the user guide to enable this display by properly setting the “PortOrder” to include the value for LVDS port. Based on your settings, LVDS display can be either primary display or secondary.

The Configuration EDitor (CED) also allows you to easily select and configure the integrated LVDS ports on the Intel embedded chipsets. Please refer to the help in CED for details.

No. The Intel® System Controller Hub US15W/US15WP/WPT and the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series chipset does not have hardware-level support for DisplayPort* natively so Intel® EMGD cannot enable this type of display output.

The clipping issue occurred on the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series B0 stepping only. This issue will be resolved in the B1 stepping and no workaround is needed for Intel® EMGD 1.8 (and later versions). For more details and workaround instructions, use our "Find it Fast" search feature on the EDC and enter document number 455133. The document is titled, Tunnel Creek B0 Silicon Erratum #9: Clipped sDVO Display on Dual Displays or Sprite Plane‐Enabled sDVO Display Frequently Asked Questions R1.1. Intel® EMGD provides a workaround for this issue and the SDVO secondary output will be turned on seamlessly.

Yes. Starting from Intel® EMGD 1.8 (and onwards) dual display clone mode in VBIOS is supported on Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series B1 stepping (this does not apply to the Intel® US15W chipset series). Some new code was introduced via the sDVO display clipping workaround, and this added extra code to the VBIOS binary. Therefore, users can only enable either the internal LVDS output or the SDVO output (not both) on the Intel Atom processor E6xx series; otherwise the VBIOS binary file generated will exceed the 64K size limit.

The Intel® EMGD user guide receives regular updates and lists all sDVO devices currently supported by Intel® EMGD via port drivers. The sDVO devices listed in the table below are supported by Intel® EMGD currently for additional display outputs. Please refer to the Tunnel Creek B0 Silicon Erratum#9 (mentioned in the previous FAQ) for more details on the limitations of the transmitter supported, i.e., dual displays with SDVO TV-out are not supported in Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series (only) due to sDVO clipping software workaround, etc.

Four display configurations are currently supported by Intel® EMGD.

• Single
• Clone
• Extended
• Dual Independent Head (DIH)

Single display - only 1 display active, supported by any operating system supported by Intel® EMGD. Single display’s hardware configuration is comprised of 1 frame buffer, 1 pipe, and 1 port.

Dual display:

• Clone configuration is supported. From a hardware perspective, Clone is comprised of 1 frame buffer, 2 pipes, and 2 ports.
• Extended configuration is supported. From a hardware perspective, Extended is comprised of 2 frame buffers, 2 pipes, and 2 ports. Windows* XP* and Windows* 7 use the term “Extended” to describe how the OS presents the multiple independent displays to the user. The primary feature of Extended mode is that it allows a second display to become an additional part of the desktop area. If the operating system is Windows* XP*/XPe* and Windows* 7, the user must use Extended (not DIH) configuration. More specifically, Extended configuration creates a single, large virtual frame buffer that is used by the applications. Separate areas of the virtual frame buffer map to each of the independent display frame buffers. Intel developed Display Manager software integrated into Intel® EMGD that is enabled when a system is running in Extended configuration. Xinerama* is the "extended" mode supported in the Linux environment. MeeGo* distro does not support Xinerama*. Intel® EMGD support on Xinerama* is only on Fedora* distribution with the following limitations: no video playback and no hardware acceleration in 3D mode.
• Dual Independent Head (DIH) is supported. From a hardware perspective, DIH is comprised of 2 frame buffers, 2 pipes, and 2 ports. Linux’s* DIH (Dual Independent Head) drives two displays simultaneously with distinct, independent, non-continuous content, each with independent resolutions.

From a hardware perspective DIH, Linux* Xinerama*, and Windows* Extended configurations are all the same.

Extended Mode in Windows drives two displays simultaneously with continuous widescreen-like content each with independent resolutions. Linux’s DIH (Dual Independent Head) drives two displays simultaneously with distinct, independent, non-continuous content, each with independent resolutions.

A single widescreen image cannot straddle two monitors in DIH but can do so in Windows Extended configuration and in Linux* Xinerama* configuration with limitations. The MeeGo* distro does not support Xinerama. Intel® EMGD support on Xinerama* is only on Fedora* distribution with the following limitations: no video playback and no hardware acceleration in 3D mode.

DIH at a hardware level has independent resolutions, refresh rates, and content, the same as Extended. In DIH, the two monitors are active and they are logically distinct.

In addition, in DIH, each image is locked to a single monitor. In Extended configuration, two monitors are also active but they form one large virtual desktop, i.e., not logically distinct.

Go to “Display properties” and select the “Settings” tab. There you should see two displays. Select the second display and enable it for extended desktop by checking the box for “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor,” and then click Apply.

Clone and extended desktop configurations can be configured using the Common User Interface (CUI). You can access the CUI from various methods such as desktop context menu, tray icon menu, Windows* control panel, and through a hot key.

Yes, this is the Clone dual display configuration. Intel® EMGD supports this configuration if the GMCH has two pipes. Each pipe drives out different timings and eventually outputs to a display device. Check the Clone Configuration sections in the user guide for specific implementation instructions.

Yes, for all supported X-Server versions, a user can run OGL and OGLES on both screens with hardware acceleration.

For US15W and the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series, you can run OGL and OGLES when running Xinerama*; however, it will not use hardware accelerated rendering. It is expected to be very slow.

Intel® EMGD supports desktop rotation through the “Rotation” function using the Intel® EMGD graphical user interface (GUI) tool in Single, Clone, and Extended mode configurations. Consult the user guide for a list of rotation instructions and operating system limitations.

Yes.

No. OpenLDI* is a hardware interface standard. Intel® EMGD neither supports nor validates OpenLDI. We are aware, however, that the OpenLDI interface standard is similar to the LVDS standard, and custom made adapters have been made to link Intel® embedded chipset to OpenLDI. Intel does not provide this solution and does not support it.

Yes, internal LVDS in the Intel® System Controller Hub US15W chipset or the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series supports SPWG* data format. Other transmitters that support LVDS can support both SPWG and OpenLDI* formats via port driver attribute 49.

See the user guide for more information.

US15W and E6xx supports the universal scalable shader engine which is dependent on the driver-supported OS and the respective shader library. The Intel® EMGD driver supports shader model 2.0 for Windows XP* Direct3D* and OpenGL* 2.0 (GLSL 1.2) and supports shader model 3.0 on Windows* 7 Direct3D*.

Yes. OpenVG* is supported by Intel® EMGD. For more information regarding OpenVG, please review this page: http://www.khronos.org/openvg/

Yes, it is possible for users to have an application that dynamically controls the LVDS backlight, but first make sure that the platform or board being used can control the backlight using PWM. The LVDS connectors need to be hooked up to the PWM inverter. Note: A document describing backlight brightness is available on EDC (http://download.intel.com/embedded/processors/Whitepaper/324567.pdf).

Currently, Intel® EMGD can support LVDS PWM. The driver takes in two configuration inputs to enable PWM. One is the frequency of the inverter and the other is the maximum intensity of the LVDS panel in percentage. Intel® EMGD normally sets the maximum intensity to 100% but configuring this parameter will set the maximum panel intensity, not the default startup intensity. What this means is that no matter what you do, the brightest setting you can achieve is what you configure in the driver.

The third part is the user application that controls the intensity of the LVDS. If you have the PCI configuration specification, go to the display device (PCI device 2) section and see the PCI configuration register. Find an entry called LEGACY Backlight Brightness (LBB). On Intel® System Controller Hub US15W, it is offset 0xF4 to 0xF7. Bit 0:7 controls the brightness of LVDS backlight. It has 255 levels of brightness. But bear in mind that the settings on the driver (mentioned in the paragraph above) will set the maximum brightness. This means if you set the max to 50%, even if you set the LBB to 255, it will be 50% intensity. You will need to write an application that writes to this PCI config space. Request the PCI configuration specification from your local Intel representative.

The LBB user application can implement controls (i.e., Sliders) to modify the LBB value which will control the backlight.

Intel® EMGD does not currently support Microsoft* Silverlight* dedicated acceleration. However, Intel® EMGD does accelerate many of the basic features and functions that Silverlight uses. For Windows*, Intel® EMGD accelerates DirectX* (and WPF) and, for Linux*, accelerates OpenGI*/GLES. In summary, Intel® EMGD currently has no specific Silverlight acceleration, but Silverlight works on top of the operating systems that Intel® EMGD is accelerating.

Neither the current chipset designs nor the OS itself (e.g., Windows* XP) natively support rotation in hardware. To rotate a display, the driver must re-render the frame buffer to display rotated which requires use of the 2D and 3D engine for every frame displayed. This causes the overhead and limitations associated with rotation. For best performance, use the display in its native orientation.

The profile defines functionality such as compression algorithm and chroma format whereas the level defines quantitative capabilities such as maximum and typical bit rates and maximum frame size.

Use commercially available media analyzers to get the bit rate and codec information. Most have this capability. The media player provides information on whether hardware acceleration is on or not.

CyberLink’s PowerDVD8* is a media player that typically uses hardware acceleration on the Intel® EMGD supported chipset/processor to decode high-definition video content.

Both formats have 1080 lines per frame. 1080p yields a higher quality image than 1080i due to the fact that 1080i content has been captured with interlacing (“i”) and 1080p has been captured with a progressive (“p”) scan. Intel® EMGD can decode video content of either type.

Intel® EMGD supports Adobe Flash* 10.1 on F14* Firefox* 3.6 and MeeGo* 1.2 with Chromium* V11. MeeGo* 1.2 with Chromium* V11 is recommended for hardware acceleration. You will need to downgrade the default Chromium* V12 bundled with MeeGo* 1.2 to V11, because there is no hardware acceleration support for Adobe* Flash* on Chromium 12 in this release.

MC (motion compensation) and VLD (variable length decoding)

Two overlay layers are supported by Intel® EMGD. However, this support depends on the driver-supported operating system. For Windows* 7, no overlay is supported.

Video filters are an aspect of video codecs and players. Regarding codecs and players, customers need to contact their chosen codec and media player vendors to obtain production licenses.

The table below contains a list of supported media players organized by operating system and video codecs hardware accelerated by Intel® EMGD.

Intel® EMGD does not support VDPAU. VDPAU stands for Video Decode and Presentation API for UNIX. VDPAU is an open source library and API originally designed by NVIDIA that provides an interface to support hardware-accelerated video decode.

Intel® EMGD supports the video acceleration (VAAPI) which is Intel's equivalent technology to VDPAU for providing accelerated video decode support. Support for the VAAPI has already been integrated into many popular media players, including MPlayer, RealPlayer, VideoLAN, and more.

Intel® EMGD continues to provide support for newer versions of the VAAPI, allowing embedded chipsets with integrated GPU cores to exhibit enhanced video decoding and presentation capabilities for Linux* Intel® EMGD users.

LibVA is the only implementation of the VAAPI interface, which Intel supports. For additional information on VAAPI, visit the VAAPI wiki page here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi

POINT OF CLARIFICATION: Both the VDPAU interface and the VAAPI interface are generic enough to be a cross-vendor standard.

Yes, Windows* 7 and Windows* Embedded Standard 7 support video encode acceleration via Intel® Media Software Development Kit (Intel® Media SDK) framework. This feature is only available for Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx Series. Refer to the user guide for details.

No, Intel® EMGD for Windows* plan of record operating systems was designed so that Intel® graphics chipset customers would not need access to the source code.

Intel® EMGD supports the following Microsoft* Windows* operating systems:

• Windows* XP (SP3), Windows* XP Embedded (SP3), Windows* Embedded for Point of Service (WePOS), Windows* 7 Embedded Standard, Windows* CE 6.0 R3 (upon Windows* CE driver availability)
  • Note: For more detail about the support list, please refer to the user guide and release notes.
• DOS support (IBM PC 2000,* MS 6.22)

Yes. Intel® EMGD supports Windows* 7 (32-bit) and Windows* Embedded Standard 7 (32-bit) in WDDM mode for platforms Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx Series and Intel® System Controller Hubs US15W, US15WP, US15WPT.

Yes, a host system running Windows* 7 64-bit can be used to build an Intel® EMGD driver package, but CED must be run in Microsoft* Virtual PC Windows* XP mode as some utilities used to generate VBIOS in CED are Windows* XP applications. Access the link below to obtain more background information on Microsoft Virtual PC mode:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Intel® EMGD for Windows* 7 and Windows* Embedded Standard 7 supports the following platforms:

• Intel® Atom™ Processor Z5xx series (with Intel® System Controller Hub US15W/US15WP/WPT chipset)
• Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx series

Note: The driver supports only Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx 1.0 GHz and above SKUs, they are 1.0 GHz (E640), 1.3 GHz (E660) and 1.6 GHz (E680). The 0.6 GHz (E620, E620T) SKU is not supported due to Microsoft Windows* 7 minimum system requirement of 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) processor or above.

Intel® Atom™ Processor E6xx series

The system still allows installation but when rebooting, Windows* 7/Windows* Embedded Standard 7 boots only in VGA mode.

Yes and no. The complete source for the driver is not available. However, we do provide the entire kernel component of the Linux* driver in source format under the open source GNU General Public License, v2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html). This kernel code includes the full hardware abstraction layer (HAL) used for programming the display adapter and performing operations such as modesetting and memory management. This kernel code can be found inside the IEMGD_HEAD_LINUX/{linux version}/driver/emgd_drm.tgz archive of the installation package generated by CED.

Unfortunately, the source for the userspace part of the Linux* driver, including the X driver and 3D stack implementation, is not available. While we understand the importance that the Linux community places on open drivers, much of our userspace driver code derives from technology licensed from 3rd parties that Intel is not legally permitted to distribute in source code format. With Intel® EMGD we have instead focused on opening the source for the parts of our driver that we legally can. Moving our HAL implementation into the kernel for Intel® EMGD is a large step forward compared to our IEGD Linux driver releases (IEGD implemented the HAL in closed-source userspace code).

Linux* Embedded Graphics Drivers from Intel have several differences from the open source Linux graphics driver:

• Intel® EMGD supports hardware not covered by the open source driver: Intel® System Controller Hub US15W chipset and Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series.
• Intel® EMGD provides mature support out of the box for embedded 3D API’s (OpenGL-ES 1.1 and 2.0, and OpenVG 1.1) and also provides similar desktop OpenGL 2.1 support to the open source drivers.
• Customers who use both Windows* and Linux* can use a single configuration tool (CED) to quickly generate configuration setups for both operating systems. Intel® EMGD releases are supported by Intel through the Questions and Answer Database (QUAD) for an extended life cycle.

The Intel® Embedded Media and Graphics Driver and video BIOS support the following Linux* operating systems and APIs:

Download or request the white paper called Cloning Linux* Drives Using MondoArchive. It's available as document number 449300 via the Intel® Business Portal.

To verify that OpenGL* is working in general, ‘glxgears’ is often used as a quick sanity test since it comes pre-installed by most Linux* distributions. Unfortunately, despite displaying a frames per second score, glxgears is actually a very poor tool to use as a benchmark. The 3D load generated by glxgears is so trivial that a large portion of the execution time is spent simply flipping back and forth between the back buffer and the front buffer. Thus the fps presented by glxgears is more an indication of how quickly you can switch between buffers, rather than the true 3D performance of the hardware. Instead, most of the Linux* community relies on applications that perform real-world 3D rendering. A set of recommended apps that can be used for testing (primarily game demos) and instructions on how to put them into “benchmark mode” is available on the freedesktop.org website here: http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Benchmarking

MeeGo* is a new Linux* operating system that debuted in 2010. It combines Moblin* and Maemo*.

Moblin* is the open source, Linux*-based software platform optimized for Intel® Atom™ processor-based platforms. Maemo* is also an open source Linux*-based software platform but for ARM*/OMAP*-based platforms (i.e., N900, N770, Qt devices).

Graphics capabilities are provided by the Intel® EMGD under MeeGo* to platforms based on the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series with Intel® System Controller Hub US15WP/WPT chipset.

Platforms based on the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series and Intel® Atom™ processor Z5xx series + Intel® System Controller Hub US15WP/WPT chipset are both supported under MeeGo* with Intel® EMGD graphics driver.