As of: 2026-07-05 — migrated from `services/ARC-B580-DRIVER.md`

Intel Arc B580 (Battlemage) — xe Driver Notes

Problem

The xe kernel driver for the Arc B580 crashes the system when the monitor is switched off/on manually. Root cause: the driver uses aggressive display power-saving states (DC states) that fail to wake properly on Battlemage, causing a cascade of GPU timeouts that brings the system down.

Symptoms in logs: xe 0000:0b:00.0: [drm] ERROR* Tile0: GT1: Force wake domain X failed to ack wake (-ETIMEDOUT)

xe 0000:0b:00.0: [drm] Tile0: GT1: trying reset from guc_exec_queue_timedout_job

xe 0000:0b:00.0: [drm] ERROR* PCODE Mailbox failed: 1 Illegal Command

UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds in mtd_intel_dg.c

Fix Applied (2026-05-03)

File 1: /etc/modprobe.d/xe-options.conf <syntaxhighlight lang="text"> options xe enable_dc=0 </syntaxhighlight> Disables aggressive display C-states so the driver doesn't enter a deep sleep it can't wake from when the monitor is switched off.

File 2: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf (appended) <syntaxhighlight lang="text"> blacklist mtd_intel_dg </syntaxhighlight> Blacklists the mtd_intel_dg module which has a confirmed kernel UBSAN bug on this GPU.

Both changes require initramfs rebuild + reboot to take effect.

How to Revert (if the fix breaks boot)

SSH in from another host, then:

1. Remove the xe options file

sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/xe-options.conf

2. Remove the two lines added to blacklist.conf
(the blank line, comment, and blacklist entry at the bottom)

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Delete the last 3 lines:
(blank line)
# Intel Arc B580 - mtd_intel_dg has a confirmed kernel UBSAN bug (array out-of-bounds)
blacklist mtd_intel_dg

3. Rebuild initramfs

sudo update-initramfs -u

4. Reboot

sudo reboot </syntaxhighlight>

Or as a one-liner if you want to skip the editor:

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash"> sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/xe-options.conf && \ sudo head -n -3 /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.tmp && \ sudo mv /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.tmp /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf && \ sudo update-initramfs -u && \ sudo reboot </syntaxhighlight>

If you need to go back to the Radeon

Power off, swap GPU physically
SSH in (or boot to TTY) and blacklist xe so it doesn't try to load for a missing device:

  ```bash
  echo "blacklist xe" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-xe.conf
  sudo update-initramfs -u
  sudo reboot
  ```

The radeon or amdgpu driver will load automatically depending on which card.

Kernel / Firmware versions at time of fix

Kernel: 6.18.1-061801-generic
GuC firmware: xe/bmg_guc_70.bin version 70.60.0
HuC firmware: xe/bmg_huc.bin version 8.2.10
DMC firmware: i915/bmg_dmc.bin version 2.6

If you upgrade the kernel and the crashes stop, the fix may no longer be needed — test by removing xe-options.conf after a kernel upgrade to see if stability holds without it.