Improved ETC2 Texture Compression Lands For Older Haswell/Ivybridge GPUs On Linux

The previously mentioned work on improving ETC2 support for older generations of Intel graphics has now been mainlined for Mesa 19.1.

This work for the ETC2 texture compression is improving the "fake" support for Intel Gen 7 class graphics, the Ivybridge and Haswell era graphics. This work was done by Igalia to address the lack of native ETC2 coverage on these several year old chips. Following this improved implementation for the fake ETC2 support is also wiring up OES_copy_image support for this extension. ETC2 is the lossy texture compression mandated since OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenGL 4.3.

Details on this fake implementation can be found via this commit followed by flipping on OES_copy_image. OES_copy_image is the OpenGL ES extension for the efficient copying of image data between image objects without needing to bind them or configure the rendering pipeline.

So if you're still running older Ivybridge~Haswell era graphics, you can look forward to this addition in Mesa 19.1 that should debut as stable around late May.