Gallium3D's Arm Bifrost Now Handling Most Of OpenGL ES 2.0, Runs GNOME Wayland

It was just back in late April that the Panfrost Gallium3D driver began rendering with Arm Mali "Bifrost" graphics processors while now it has most of OpenGL ES 2.0 working, some of the desktop OpenGL 2.1 functionality, and is capable of running software like GNOME on Wayland.

After implementing a lot more opcodes, plenty of testing, and sorting through a mess of compiler/IR matters, the Arm Bifrost graphics micro-architecture is beginning to see working OpenGL/GLES support forming. As a reminder, Mali Bifrost GPUs have been around for a while and a step before the newer Arm Mali "Valhall" architecture. Bifrost graphics IP is found in the likes of the Samsung Exynos 7885/8895, Rockchip RK3326, AmLogic S922X, Kirin 970/980/990, and numerous other SoCs of recent years.

This open-source driver has all major features of OpenGL ES 2.0 working for Bifrost along with some of OpenGL 2.1 and can run Wayland compositors, media software like MPV and Kodi, and games like Neverball and SuperTux.

More details on the Bifrost open-source bring-up effort via this blog post by Alyssa Rosenzweig.