Intel Aims For Open-Source OpenGL 3.0 Driver By Year's End

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Aims For Open-Source OpenGL 3.0 Driver By Year's End

There's more good news out of the 2011 X.Org Developers' Conference in Chicago. Besides the big news that the S3TC patent might be invalid, PathScale has a working OpenCL compute stack, and other events, here's something very exciting: Intel really expects to have working OpenGL 3.0 support in Mesa for hardware drivers by the end of this calendar year!..

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

[89c51]

i would be happier if they were aiming for a G3D driver by year's end

[elmariachi]

Will this cover the G45 (4500MHD) chips? I still don't have OpenGL2 I think... btw: what's the code name of the G45? It's not Sandy Bridge is it?

[darkbasic]

Will this cover the G45 (4500MHD) chips?

Probably like the H264 VAAPI G45 support

[Azpegath]

I just want to spread love all over right now! Michael, you make me so happy! I work in a med-tech-company with visualization using OpenGL (which I prefer since I'm a Linux nerd), and we can't use anything more modern than OpenGL2.1 since our code is often run on virtualized machines (Xen). The virtualization means that there is only a software driver, so we depend heavily on Mesa (I think at least!).
When these changes are released, we can finally start looking at porting everything to OpenGL 3, at least bit by bit.

[elmariachi]

Probably like the H264 VAAPI G45 support

It works for me!

[darkbasic]

It works for me!

Faster than a slideshow? Can you please post your experience there: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...vailable/page4

[elanthis]

I just want to spread love all over right now! Michael, you make me so happy! I work in a med-tech-company with visualization using OpenGL (which I prefer since I'm a Linux nerd), and we can't use anything more modern than OpenGL2.1 since our code is often run on virtualized machines (Xen). The virtualization means that there is only a software driver, so we depend heavily on Mesa (I think at least!).
When these changes are released, we can finally start looking at porting everything to OpenGL 3, at least bit by bit.

For what it's worth, it's not until OpenGL 3.1 through 3.3 that you start seeing any real utility out of "porting" to GL3. The idea of the core/compatibility profiles doesn't even exist until 3.1 iirc, and all 3.0 did was make a few extensions core. It was pretty worthless, hence all the immense outrage from GL developers when Khronos released it in 2008. The really cool features of the GL 3.x series didn't show up until GL 3.2, and the performance of the API isn't even capable of achieving parity with D3D 10 until GL 3.3. Same goes with GL 4.x, where D3D 11 still has features that GL doesn't (despite all the nonsense of various articles and announcements claiming that 4.0 had feature parity with D3D 11).

We need GL 3.0 to get to GL 3.3, but don't expect the world to become a magical place when Mesa supports GL 3.0. It'll basically just mean that floating point textures are supported and integers in shaders are working properly. The first already works but is disabled due to legal issues, and the latter should be done soon, which may be all that Ian meant when he said that the Intel driver would support GL 3. That is, he might have meant the driver supports GLSL 1.30 rather than the whole GL 3.0 API itself.

[DanL]

That is, he might have meant the driver supports GLSL 1.30 rather than the whole GL 3.0 API itself.

IIRC, GLSL 1.3 is the only major roadblock left for 3.0, so there might not be a significant difference between those two in terms of work left, at least from a software acceleration standpoint. Look at the list: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/docs/GL3.txt

[elanthis]

IIRC, GLSL 1.3 is the only major roadblock left for 3.0, so there might not be a significant difference between those two in terms of work left, at least from a software acceleration standpoint. Look at the list: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/docs/GL3.txt

The floating point texture/framebuffer patent is the issue, though. You can't have GL 3.0 without licensing, invalidating, or circumventing that patent. Unless Intel thinks that patent is no longer a problem, Mesa cannot and will not support OpenGL 3.0+ for another 10 years (or however long it will be until the patent expires; I forget the exact date).