[sf-lug] Intel graphics chipsets (was /firmware/radeon)

[Akkana Peck]

Thanks for all the suggestions! Rick's 'lspci -nn | grep VGA'
looking for the vendor/product IDs turned out to be the answer
(followed by a web search on vendor:product). Thanks, Rick!

But in case anyone's curious, here's a breakdown of all the
suggestions and what they offered:

Michael Paoli writes:
> dmidecode and lshw may be helpful.

I didn't see anything in dmidecode that looked related to video,
but maybe I'm not looking for the right strings.

The relevant stanza from lshw:

        *-display
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 2
             bus info: pci at 0000:00:02.0
             version: 02
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
             configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
             resources: irq:42 memory:f2000000-f23fffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff

I don't think there's anything useful there except the driver, which
is easier to get from lsmod.

Rick Moen writes:
> How about 'lspci -v -s 00:02.0'?  Are the additional detail lines more
> useful?

A little, but not as much as I'd hoped:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device 215a
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42
        Memory at f2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at 1800 [size=8]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
        Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features
        Kernel driver in use: i915

I'm not sure if those capabilities have much to do with what the
graphics chipset can do, or not.

> 'lspci -nn | grep VGA' will get you (at the end of the line, in square
> brackets) the 32-bit hex string that is the _full_ PCI ID, like this:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 02)

So I do have a product ID. And googling for intel graphics 8086:0046
takes me to http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_HD_Graphics
which tells me that 0046 is HD Graphics Arrandale, release date 2010.
Hooray -- success!

> Thing is, though, I strongly suspect that whatever you do with the PCI
> ID information, the identification string you end up with will be a
> little generic, because Intel simply isn't very specific in this matter.

Could be. But at least I know what generation it is.

> Xorg's probing is probably more informative, so look at
> /var/log/Xorg.0.log .

I had tried that before, without seeing anything illuminating. But
it turns out the critical information is buried in a line that
doesn't look illuminating unless you know what you're looking for:

[    26.978] (--) PCI:*(0:0:2:0) 8086:0046:17aa:215a rev 2, Mem @ 0xf2000000/419
4304, 0xd0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x00001800/8

So there's the 8086:0046 again, with even more information. Though
googling for 8086:0046:17aa:215a isn't finding any obvious
information more useful than what thinkwiki already gave me
for 8086:0046. And maybe the best answer for how to get the
graphics chipset information is: grep PCI /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Chaiken, Alison writes:
> How about 'lsmod | grep video'.   That shows, among other entries,
> 'i915' for my laptop, although it helps to know that 'uvc' is the camera

Same for mine:
video                  17511  1 i915
but that just tells me what Linux driver is being used, not what the
actual chipset is. I think it uses i915 for a wide range of chips.

Ken Shaffer writes:
> Try looking at the Intel lines in dmesg.  One of those should have your
> graphics info.  On my Toshiba:
[ ... ]
> [    0.093682] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz
> (fam: 06, model: 3a, stepping: 09)
> 
> The 3630 in the last line is the graphics level.

dmesg didn't give me anything particularly useful, or maybe I just
don't know how to interpret it:

[    0.073561] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU       M 540  @ 2.53GHz (fam: 06, model: 25, stepping: 02)
 ...
[    1.070703] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel HD Graphics Chipset
[    1.070720] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected gtt size: 2097152K total, 262144K mappable
[    1.071563] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 32768K stolen memory
[    1.071724] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xd0000000
 ...
[   10.780569] i915 0000:00:02.0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
 ...
[   15.391096] intel ips 0000:00:1f.6: i915 driver attached, reenabling gpu turb

If there's something there that tells me the chipset, I don't
recognize it. For the CPU it just says i5, no graphics level like
your i7-3630QM.

Whew!

        ...Akkana