LunarG Pushes Forward To Advance Open-Source Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LunarG Pushes Forward To Advance Open-Source Graphics

LunarG is a company focused upon 3D driver innovations that was also involved in the original Tungsten Graphics days, stewarding Mesa until its developers were acquired by VMware. For an update where LunarG is at today, its co-founder and executive director, Jens Owens, has provided an update for Phoronix readers...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ4OTI

[zoomblab]

Common shader compiler. Great, but does any driver uses that in practice?

Also I would like to know whether the promise of Gallium3D about code re usability has been realized?

[Znurre]

Jens Owens says they're latest focus at LunarG is on supporting open game consoles with Android and SteamOS systems to provide driver-tuning experise and in the embedded marketplace with supporting third-party drivers.

Small typos

[mcirsta]

anything for ARM

I'd like to ask if they have any plans on doing something for the closed source ARM GPUs. Maybe sponsor people already working on open source drivers for these or make it even make it easier to write these drivers.

[JensOwen]

Common shader compiler. Great, but does any driver uses that in practice?

Also I would like to know whether the promise of Gallium3D about code re usability has been realized?

There are no open source drivers using the LunarGLASS shader compiler stack today. One of the big challenges in moving to any new stack is the amount of inertia and investment in the current stack. We will continue to work with the open source community in this area, but I do not want to set any expectations that this is an easy task.

As for the benefits of Gallium3D reuse? I think there are many excellent data points out there now, and not just from our ilo driver, but also from the Nouveau, Radeon, LLVMpipe, Freedreno and others. We stand among the many that are reporting a significant reduction in the amount of work required to get a high quality driving when leveraging the Gallium Infrastructure. We are thankful to the folks on the VMware team for keeping this infrastructure moving forward, something not all the smaller teams depending on Gallium3D are always able to do.

There are also many high quality drivers that are not Gallium3D based. The investment required to get to high quality is considerably higher, but not less valuable in the end.

[JensOwen]

I'd like to ask if they have any plans on doing something for the closed source ARM GPUs. Maybe sponsor people already working on open source drivers for these or make it even make it easier to write these drivers.

We think the work the Rob Clark and others have done is really good, and we are glad they have been able to leverage open source infrastructures. That said, LunarG depends on contract revenue from the GPU vendors, and is not in a position to directly support reverse engineering driver projects. It has been really great to see Intel, then AMD and hopefully even NVIDIA take steps to support open source development. Perhaps other GPU vendors in the broader industry will take notice.

[slyon]

We think the work the Rob Clark and others have done is really good, and we are glad they have been able to leverage open source infrastructures. That said, LunarG depends on contract revenue from the GPU vendors, and is not in a position to directly support reverse engineering driver projects. It has been really great to see Intel, then AMD and hopefully even NVIDIA take steps to support open source development. Perhaps other GPU vendors in the broader industry will take notice.

What if somebody would sponsor your engineers (e.g. through a crowdfunding campain).
Would you be able to reverse engineer and develop a 3D driver for an ARM GPU, let's say the PowerVR chip?
Or is it legally impossible?