Some Early Bits Of The "Soft FP64" Infrastructure Will Be Mainlined Soon In Mesa

[nanonyme]

Last time I asked this, I think the Intel guy told me that from HD4000 onwards the Intel iGPUs actually have hardware support for fp64.

Which sounds totally like a sensible route to go with when higher OpenGL versions mandated fp64 and there was no useful open-source software fp64 implementation. Will be interesting to see whether fp64 will again go away from budget hardware in the future

[starshipeleven]

Which sounds totally like a sensible route to go with when higher OpenGL versions mandated fp64 and there was no useful open-source software fp64 implementation. Will be interesting to see whether fp64 will again go away from budget hardware in the future

Since it's not a dedicated piece of silicon but just a "mode" to use the same blocks they have anwyay, I doubt they will drop it.

It might not receive attention (so it might run crappier if they re-arrange things to have more important functionality working better), but I doubt dropping it at all is worthwhile.

Also because while still technically much weaker than a dedicated GPU it still beats software-only fp64 (i.e. on CPU).

[bridgman]

Right... FP64 was initially an "add-on" with fairly big silicon cost, but when we moved to GCN we were able to architect low-rate fp64 into the core design.

It might end up on the chopping block if we were ever making a REALLY low-end part, eg for servers, but I doubt we would remove it otherwise.

I expect the same applies to other vendors, but I don't know that for a fact.