Valve Finds Value In Open-Source Drivers; L4D2 Running On Mesa

Valve Software has found value in having open-source graphics drivers, continues to collaborate with Intel over Linux OpenGL support, and they now have Left 4 Dead 2 running on Mesa.

During his presentation on Tuesday, Eric Anholt of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center was not only talking about their driver performance optimization plans, including how they plan to switch to an LLVM-based shader compiler and catch-up in OpenGL compliance, but also about Valve Software on Linux. (Of course, if you follow @MichaelLarabel on Twitter, this news wouldn't be a surprise.)

Talking from the Sheraton Hotel in San Diego at the 2012 GStreamer Conference, Eric Anholt expressed much happiness over collaborating with Valve on Linux. "[Working with Valve has been] the most open interaction we've had with any game vendor ever."

"It's exciting!" Eric also acknowledged this is a huge and exciting opportunity for Intel and Linux. "Valve makes games people actually want to run, rather than most of the games we work with now... [Valve develops] popular games."

Back in July I wrote that Intel and Valve were working together on open-source driver support for Valve's Source Engine on Linux. This was after Eric Anholt, Ian Romanick, and Ken Graunke -- all Intel OTC developers -- went up to Valve's headquarters to work with the Valve Linux team for one week after I had got the two Linux development teams in contact.

Since being at Valve, Intel developers have committed patches to improve their open-source driver's performance for Left 4 Dead 2: Intel Continues With Mesa Changes For Valve and Intel Makes More Driver Improvements For Valve's L4D2. As shared in Intel Aims To Hit On Performance, Plans LLVM Compiler, they are also planning threaded GL dispatch support and other future work to benefit the Source Engine on Linux with the Intel Mesa driver.