Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Still Being Toyed With

[Kayden]

I don't get Intel?s total refusal to support Gallium3D.

I understand that if there is a fine working classic driver for older hardware, the GPU vendor would not want to spend money on a Gallium port (AMD did that as well). But considering that i915g exists already and reportedly is better than the classic driver, to then spend the resources on the classic driver to achieve partial feature parity with the Gallium driver makes no economic sense from my POV. Shouldn't Intel?s priority be to make their hardware customers as satisfied as possible to make them want to buy Intel products as well?

Anybody got a clue why Intel insists on not touching Gallium ? not even for new drivers?

The work required to bump i915 classic to 2.1 was minimal - probably an hour or so - and makes the driver a lot more useful. At this point, we're not really spending any resources on that generation of hardware at all. In fact, these two patches were the only significant work done on the classic driver since March 2012 (yes, last year). So it's not really a refusal of Gallium in this case, just that we think our resources are better spent on newer hardware.

For our new hardware, you're right - we are currently refusing to use Gallium. That's a different situation, though.

[Awesomeness]

For our new hardware, you're right - we are currently refusing to use Gallium. That's a different situation, though.

And what's the reasoning behind this? I googled for a reason but couldn't find any. AMD, Google, Red Hat, VMWare,? back Gallium these days and only Intel seems to be missing.

[bwat47]

I don't get Intel?s total refusal to support Gallium3D.

I understand that if there is a fine working classic driver for older hardware, the GPU vendor would not want to spend money on a Gallium port (AMD did that as well). But considering that i915g exists already and reportedly is better than the classic driver, to then spend the resources on the classic driver to achieve partial feature parity with the Gallium driver makes no economic sense from my POV. Shouldn't Intel?s priority be to make their hardware customers as satisfied as possible to make them want to buy Intel products as well?

Anybody got a clue why Intel insists on not touching Gallium ? not even for new drivers?

Intel doesn't hate gallium or anything, afiak its just because their current driver is in a good state, very stable and optimized, and they don't view switching to gallium as being worth it for them.

[Awesomeness]

Intel doesn't hate gallium or anything, afiak its just because their current driver is in a good state, very stable and optimized, and they don't view switching to gallium as being worth it for them.

Quote: ?For our new hardware, you're right - we are currently refusing to use Gallium.?

[deanjo]

Quote: ?For our new hardware, you're right - we are currently refusing to use Gallium.?

I guess it comes down to what would switching to Gallium actually do for them. There are advantages to maintaining your own code base as well rather then relying on more factions to support your product. Switching just for the sake of switching with no real clear advantage doesn't seem like a smart or cost effective move.

[artivision]

I guess it comes down to what would switching to Gallium actually do for them. There are advantages to maintaining your own code base as well rather then relying on more factions to support your product. Switching just for the sake of switching with no real clear advantage doesn't seem like a smart or cost effective move.

Gallium=LLVM use for many different functions: Graphics, OpenCL, C_accel on GPU. I also propose to Intel, to drop their own compiler suite and support C11 with LLVM for Linux and Windows.

[deanjo]

Gallium=LLVM use for many different functions: Graphics, OpenCL, C_accel on GPU. I also propose to Intel, to drop their own compiler suite and support C11 with LLVM for Linux and Windows.

Using LLVM hasn't yielded any real improvements in performance, openCL support on an igp is a bit of a joke, no one is going to do any real serious openCL work on a IGP. None of the listed reasons are compelling enough for them to change. It doesn't make them any more money, the advantages are very small and don't overly improve performance. That is a lot of effort for next to no return on investment.

Pretty much any entry level video card can pummel the igp's in computing performance and nobody is going to use them for any serious gpgpu purposes.



Please note that the intel IGP's don't even have any DP capabilities. The DP results there are actually from the CPU doing the crunching on the IB processors.

[artivision]

Using LLVM hasn't yielded any real improvements in performance, openCL support on an igp is a bit of a joke, no one is going to do any real serious openCL work on a IGP. None of the listed reasons are compelling enough for them to change. It doesn't make them any more money, the advantages are very small and don't overly improve performance. That is a lot of effort for next to no return on investment.

Pretty much any entry level video card can pummel the igp's in computing performance and nobody is going to use them for any serious gpgpu purposes.



Please note that the intel IGP's don't even have any DP capabilities. The DP results there are actually from the CPU doing the crunching on the IB processors.

Sorry but you are unfamiliar. First DP can be done in software. Second Intel-HD-Graphics are powerful: Intel-HD4000= 170Gflops-64bit-Fmac= 340Gflops-32bit-Fmac= 510Gflops-32bit-Streaming. GT3 is almost 3 times faster and OpenCL is important for OpenGL Compute-Shaders. Third LLVM will be faster when Optimizations for Graphics-Languages are ready, today we use extra things with some Back-Ends. Also someone needs to give as a complete Back-End and not one that hides functionality like AMD's. Sure they don't want as to have good performance to both Games and 3D-Profecional-Applications, but.

[Awesomeness]

Switching just for the sake of switching with no real clear advantage doesn't seem like a smart or cost effective move.

Choosing Gallium for new, yet unwritten drivers isn't switching.

[Kayden]

Choosing Gallium for new, yet unwritten drivers isn't switching.

For a completely new architecture, yes, I agree. For new generations of Intel hardware, though, it's a lot less effort to add incremental support to our existing driver than to write a whole new driver every year.