Intel's Open-Source Gallium3D Driver Achieves OpenGL 4.6 Conformance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel's Open-Source Gallium3D Driver Achieves OpenGL 4.6 Conformance

The Khronos Group has officially confirmed Intel's new "Iris" Gallium3D driver as being a conformant OpenGL 4.6 implementation...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Gallium3D-OpenGL-4.6-Go

[shmerl]

What's the story with Intel's "oneAPI"? Is it something they are pushing to replace Vulkan?

See: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15130...oduri-about-xe

Note how Raja avoided mentioning Vulkan even once:

IC: Intel is starting to open up about Xe, and it clearly wants to cover a large range of the market, all with the oneAPI stack. Can Xe and oneAPI be everything to everybody at the same time?

RK: That’s a great question. First off, when we look at the scale and reach of graphics, whether it’s integrated graphics where we have hundreds of millions of users, or discrete graphics going into the cloud, one of the central elements is software. What is the software that runs all of this stuff? We have sets of APIs like DirectX, OpenGL, OpenCL, and other languages – and we also have middleware, like game engines that sit on top of the stack. What we want is to be everywhere where there is a software presence.

I will summarize our strategy simply as ‘Leverage, Optimize, Scale’. We are leveraging our existing CPU and integrated software stack and integrated graphics IP. We have invested heavily to optimize our existing IP. The next step was to scale - for the high-end GPUs, we needed to scale over 1000x. As you saw from the Xe-HPC disclosures, that’s our vision of scale.

I think we have a very good strategy here, and that is not something by accident – I’m taking my 20 years of industry experience, plus the two from being here at Intel, and applying it here. The way we approached the Xe design is to take measured steps – we’ve already proved with having silicon in hand.

[cl333r]

What's the story with Intel's "oneAPI"? Is it something they are pushing to replace Vulkan?

No, Intel couldn't replace Vulkan even if it wanted to.

[shmerl]

No, Intel couldn't replace Vulkan even if it wanted to.

Then what is this oneAPI? Something that uses Vulkan to interact with GPUs?

[davidbepo]

oneAPI is NOT replacing OpenGL or Vulkan, OpenCL maybe tough

[skeevy420]

What's the story with Intel's "oneAPI"? Is it something they are pushing to replace Vulkan?

IC: Intel is starting to open up about Xe, and it clearly wants to cover a large range of the market, all with the oneAPI stack. Can Xe and oneAPI be everything to everybody at the same time?

RK: That’s a great question. First off, when we look at the scale and reach of graphics, whether it’s integrated graphics where we have hundreds of millions of users, or discrete graphics going into the cloud, one of the central elements is software. What is the software that runs all of this stuff? We have sets of APIs like DirectX, OpenGL, OpenCL, and other languages – and we also have middleware, like game engines that sit on top of the stack. What we want is to be everywhere where there is a software presence.

I will summarize our strategy simply as ‘Leverage, Optimize, Scale’. We are leveraging our existing CPU and integrated software stack and integrated graphics IP. We have invested heavily to optimize our existing IP. The next step was to scale - for the high-end GPUs, we needed to scale over 1000x. As you saw from the Xe-HPC disclosures, that’s our vision of scale.

I think we have a very good strategy here, and that is not something by accident – I’m taking my 20 years of industry experience, plus the two from being here at Intel, and applying it here. The way we approached the Xe design is to take measured steps – we’ve already proved with having silicon in hand.

That's a generic non-answer similar to the crap politicians say during interviews. ‘Leverage, Optimize, Scale' is the business strategy of, and pulling this number from you know where, 90% of everyone from residential contractors to Walmart.

[shmerl]

That's a generic non-answer similar to the crap politicians say during interviews. ‘Leverage, Optimize, Scale' is the business strategy of, and pulling this number from you know where, 90% of everyone from residential contractors to Walmart.

Yep, he pretty much dodged many other questions, like about their plans for gaming market with their Xe GPUs.

[shmerl]

oneAPI is NOT replacing OpenGL or Vulkan, OpenCL maybe tough

He did mention OpenGL though, so from the sound of it (and the name), oneAPI looks like some "one ring to rule them all". Besides, there is an overlap between Vulkan and OpenCL (both can be used for compute), and didn't Khronos plan to work on some synergy for them?

So this oneAPI sounds like a parallel effort for the same thing.

[skeevy420]

Yep, he pretty much dodged many other questions, like about their plans for gaming market with their Xe GPUs.

In all fairness, it's obvious that he's very limited in what can actually be said via some NDA which basically forces one into giving those kinds of answers.

[shmerl]

In all fairness, it's obvious that he's very limited in what can actually be said via some NDA which basically forces one into giving those kinds of answers.

Yeah, we'll have to wait and see. I just hope whatever they do, won't be some "Intel only" lock-in. We don't need any more of those, there is enough of that garbage from Nvidia already.