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Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Proposed For Mainline

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  • Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Proposed For Mainline

    Phoronix: Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Proposed For Mainline

    Early this morning I delivered benchmarks of the new Intel Gallium3D driver developed by a LunarG employee. Coincidentally, hours later, the developer has proposed merging this Gallium3D graphics driver for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge hardware into mainline Mesa...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Support for GLSL IR could benefit other hardware/drivers as well?

    Now that Gallium supports both TGSI and LLVM IR (i.e. more than one kind), it probably wouldn't be too hard to add support for GLSL IR and drop in the classic driver's compiler backend. Less than a week, I'd imagine."
    If implemented, the GLSL IR support could be used on other hardware/drivers? Would it bring improvements over current state of affairs?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by BadgerRush View Post
      If implemented, the GLSL IR support could be used on other hardware/drivers? Would it bring improvements over current state of affairs?
      Probably, yes, although it would take a large amount of work. All the drivers would need a big overhaul.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
        Probably, yes, although it would take a large amount of work. All the drivers would need a big overhaul.
        I see no problem with that, unifying the driver architecture for all GPUs can only lead to faster development for all supported hardware with everyone involved taking their piece of the puzzle and fixing it up to tie into all the other pieces.

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        • #5
          I'm genuinely confused now as to the status of each driver provided in the kernel. I usually leave the default distro Intel kernel driver running with whatver install I am performing, and use the binaries for 'the other two', but the list of what is useful where for AMD and Intel is now has gotten a bit long for me when you throw in X/Wayland, and the various Desktop Environments and sysinit's etc. Is there a maintained list which both simplifies and details each driver and its support, and features?

          And if there's one floating around, maybe from some presentation, a manager-style (for the ignoramii such as myself) diagramme of the entire graphics stack (kernel, driver, gallium, etc) to speed up our own knowledge-gathering into the very fast moving world of gfx development.

          Ta =)
          Hi

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          • #6
            Originally posted by stiiixy View Post
            I'm genuinely confused now as to the status of each driver provided in the kernel. I usually leave the default distro Intel kernel driver running with whatver install I am performing, and use the binaries for 'the other two', but the list of what is useful where for AMD and Intel is now has gotten a bit long for me when you throw in X/Wayland, and the various Desktop Environments and sysinit's etc. Is there a maintained list which both simplifies and details each driver and its support, and features?

            And if there's one floating around, maybe from some presentation, a manager-style (for the ignoramii such as myself) diagramme of the entire graphics stack (kernel, driver, gallium, etc) to speed up our own knowledge-gathering into the very fast moving world of gfx development.

            Ta =)
            There really isnt much change....

            Intel MAINLY has the intel open source driver. Theres other floating around but the main one is the one provided by intel.

            AMD has R600g, RadeonSI, and Catalyst. R600g is for everything up to...I think HD 7000? (Confirm that, anyone?) RadeonSI is post HD 7000. Catalyst it the closed source driver.

            Nvidia has Nouveau, and the closed source driver. End of story.


            There ya go :P
            All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Ericg View Post
              There really isnt much change....

              Intel MAINLY has the intel open source driver. Theres other floating around but the main one is the one provided by intel.

              AMD has R600g, RadeonSI, and Catalyst. R600g is for everything up to...I think HD 7000? (Confirm that, anyone?) RadeonSI is post HD 7000. Catalyst it the closed source driver.

              Nvidia has Nouveau, and the closed source driver. End of story.


              There ya go :P
              r600g: Radeon HD 2xxx-Radeon HD 6xxxx and some rebranded Radeon HD "7xxx", say 7350
              radeonsi: Radeon HD 7750 and above.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by stiiixy View Post
                I'm genuinely confused now as to the status of each driver provided in the kernel. I usually leave the default distro Intel kernel driver running with whatver install I am performing, and use the binaries for 'the other two', but the list of what is useful where for AMD and Intel is now has gotten a bit long for me when you throw in X/Wayland, and the various Desktop Environments and sysinit's etc. Is there a maintained list which both simplifies and details each driver and its support, and features?

                And if there's one floating around, maybe from some presentation, a manager-style (for the ignoramii such as myself) diagramme of the entire graphics stack (kernel, driver, gallium, etc) to speed up our own knowledge-gathering into the very fast moving world of gfx development.

                Ta =)

                Intel: no closed source driver.
                mesa drivers -
                i915 - GL2 - runs old 8xx chips up to pre-i965, this is pretty old hardware
                i915g - basically the same hardware support but faster, this driver was sponsored by google instead of intel
                i965 - GL3 - the official intel driver for anything 965 to current, which is pretty much anything halfway recent. sandy/ivybridge+ have GL3.
                i965g - a toy driver useful for experimentation, that only runs on sandy/ivy bridge. not for you unless you know what you're doing
                kernel driver - all the mesa drivers above run on the same 915 kernel driver.

                ATI: the binary fglrx driver supports HD5000 series and up.
                mesa drivers -
                r100, r200 - GL2 - old classic drivers for ancient hardware
                r300c/r600c - GL2 - the old non-gallium drivers are deleted and not supported.
                r300g - GL2 - runs radeon 9500 - X1900
                r600g - GL3 - runs radeon HD2000 - HD6900
                radeonsi - GL2? - runs HD7000+. still being heavily worked on.
                kernel driver - all use the same radeon kernel driver.

                You can just think of gallium as helper code in mesa that helps developers share common code between drivers and speeds up development. that's all there really is to it.

                All the GL3 drivers are currently at 3.1 status, i think, and will likely very soon reach 3.3. All 3.1+ contexts are only available in core profiles. 3.0 is the latest compatibility context.
                NVidia/ATI proprietary drivers provide that all the way through 4.x.
                Last edited by smitty3268; 17 April 2013, 03:49 AM.

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                • #9
                  Sweet, thanks for all that, guys. Good jumping points there.

                  Eventually I want to do an installed and maintained (for a short period of time) LFS to really get my head around most traditional aspects of Linux, and it will likely be done on 'ancient hardware' as well as something modern. The graphics aspects, from kernel to DE, seemed a bit out there at the moment for someone like me hovering around the fringes, but ultimately it would be nice to run a DE on a LFS build.

                  Again, thank you muchly.
                  Hi

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