Intel says that both Intel and AMD CPUs can update Arc GPU firmware [Updated]

Intel told Ars Technica that it's possible for both Intel andAMD platforms to update ArcGPU firmware, and that Intel's Management Engine wasn't required.

According to Intel, Arc products do not require the host CSME to update Arc firmware. Both of the platforms will work withware updates. Arc products have their own Graphics Security Control that uses existing Intel technology to implement the update flow.

A follow-up from Richard Hughes, the developer who discovered the limitation, said that a user had told him that an ArcGPU should allow updates on x86 devices. We confirmed this ourselves on a Windows PC with an ArcGPU installed and saw Intel's GSC interface listed in the device manager, which should work the same way on both Intel andAMD platforms. We don't know how it will work in x86 Linux.

It is possible that non-x86 platforms, including those based on Arm and IBM's Power architectures, will not be able to update Arc graphics. The majority of consumer-oriented gaming graphics cards won't end up in these systems, so this issue is not going to affect anyone.

We were generally impressed with the performance of Intel's Arc graphics cards, especially since they were a first generation product. Unstable drivers, inconsistent performance, and a couple of weird problems that you need to dig around in your computer's bios settings are some of the potential caveats that buyers have.

Linux developers working on Arc support seem to have found something odd about the cards. According to Richard Hughes, the Intel Engine Management is what handles the updating of the Arc GPUs's firmware. Hughes ran into the problem in the context of IBM's POWER CPUs architecture, but it seems to make updates impossible on non-Intel platforms.

Thankfully, these kinds of updates don't happen all that often, and when they do happen, it's usually to fix a specific obscure problem or add minor features. The first generation of Arc cards, which are Intel's first widely released dedicated GPUs and have already proven to be extremely rough around the edges in a bunch of other ways, would need important firmware updates down the line.

We've asked Intel if it will change the way Arc updates are installed, and we'll update this article if we get a response.