GPU hang on Intel Alder Lake Xe (i915) with Chrome and VMware 3D accelerated under Ubuntu 24.04.4
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1564036/gpu-hang-on-intel-alder-lake-xe-i915-with-chrome-and-vmware-3d-accelerated-undHï,
I encountered GPU hang issues on Ubuntu 24.04.4 with an Intel Alder Lake Iris Xe (GT2) GPU. This affects both Chrome (GPU compositing) and VMware Workstation (3D accelerated graphics), and may impact other applications that use hardware graphics acceleration. Cela m'est arrivé après une mise à jour de mon PC ce matin, et quel mauvaise surprise d'être tombé pile au moment ou ubuntu 24.04.4...
At first, I thought this was related to a kernel update, but it wasn’t, since I kept the same kernel. My reasoning led me to believe it was likely related to a graphics driver… I’m far from an expert in this area, but I’ve summarized some information here that I hope will help others who might be in the same situation.
System and GPU info
uname -a
# Linux computer 6.11.0-29-generic
lspci -k | grep -A 3 VGA
# 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
# Subsystem: Dell Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
# Kernel driver in use: i915
# Kernel modules: i915, xe
- Driver:
i915(manages Xe internally) - Xe is the GPU architecture, not a separate driver.
Debug flow
sudo dmesg | grep -i i915
Key excerpts for Chrome:
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Found ALDERLAKE_P display version 13.00
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GT0: GuC firmware i915/adlp_guc_70.bin version 70.36.0
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GT0: HuC firmware i915/tgl_huc.bin version 7.9.3
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] GT0: GUC: submission enabled
[drm] GPU HANG: ecode 12:1:e75ffefe, in chrome [PID]
[drm] chrome[PID] context reset due to GPU hang
[drm] GPU HANG: ecode 12:1:e75ffefe, in main-mks [PID]
[drm] main-mks[PID] context reset due to GPU hang
These GPU HANG messages correspond to i915 context resets.
- The kernel in use (6.11.0-29-generic) had been stable for several months and was not updated during my recent apt upgrade. In fact .. GPU hangs appeared after a recent the upgrade and reboot process.
- This suggests the issue is not kernel-related, but likely related to i915/Mesa handling of Xe GPU features.
Remediation (workarounds)
Chrome:
- Disable Hardware acceleration:
chrome://settings/system→ Turn off Use hardware acceleration when available : https://tech-latest.com/turn-hardware-acceleration-on-and-off-in-chrome/ - This prevents GPU hangs and context resets.
VMware Workstation:
- Disable Accelerate 3D graphics in VM settings (see : https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/discussion/isbrenderercomm-lost-connection-to-mkssandbox)
- Prevents 3D rendering freezes or errors such as:
VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (svga)
ISBRendererComm: Lost connection to mksSandbox (PID)
A log file is available in "/home/$HOME/vmware/<vm>.log".
You can request support using VMware support tools.
I’m not sure who to contact to get this fixed in i915 upstream, but feel free to forward this report to the relevant developers or community.








