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1h ago

Intel Proposes XMX-Accelerated XeSS Support for Valve’s Proton

If accepted, the changes would let Intel Arc GPUs use dedicated XMX matrix cores to speed XeSS upscaling in Windows games running on Linux.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+
Image
The illustration depicts XeSS processing a game scene through multiple image layers, representing Intel's graphics upscaling technology.

Overview

  • Intel engineer Damian Tomczak opened four linked pull requests on Tuesday that modify Proton, Wine, VKD3D-Proton and DXVK to add a built-in libxess.dll shim.
  • The libxess.dll shim forwards Direct3D12 XeSS calls to a native Linux library (libxess.so) and uses vkd3d-proton to convert D3D12 objects into Vulkan so the native code can run.
  • If merged, compatible Intel Arc GPUs could use their XMX (Xe Matrix Extensions) engines for the faster XeSS execution path, which can improve upscaling speed and enable frame generation over the current DP4a fallback.
  • Proton’s proposed logic checks for a suitable native XeSS library and its version and falls back to a game’s Windows XeSS DLL when no compatible native library is found, and the pull requests remain under review with no release date.
  • The work targets better performance for Intel-powered Linux gaming devices such as handheld PCs and SteamOS systems but does not extend XMX-accelerated XeSS to AMD or NVIDIA GPUs.