Intel OpenGL/Vulkan Linux Drivers Strike Another Optimization For Tiger Lake

It was just on Monday that Intel's talented open-source developers merged a hefty Tiger Lake graphics optimization into the Mesa 20.3 code that for some games/software can be around ~11% faster thanks to greater caching. Just a day later another optimization has arrived for helping these latest-generation Intel graphics.

Merged on Tuesday was a change to benefit Intel's Iris Gallium3D (OpenGL) and ANV Vulkan drivers for making use of the HDC data cache for uniform buffer object (UBO) pulls on Gen12+ hardware, namely Tiger Lake at this point.

By making use of the data cache for UBO pulls, there is generally up to another few percent improvements for various OpenGL and Vulkan games running on Linux -- either natively or through the likes of the DXVK layer.

Some improvements cited in the merge include:

GTA V DXVK 104.0%
Talos Principle GL 102.8%
Rise of Tomb Raider VK 102.8%
Dark Souls 3 DXVK 101.4%
Witcher3 DXVK 101.3%
Bioshock Infinite GL 100.5%
Doom 2016 VK 97.7%

Doom seems to be the only case of knowingly regressing the performance slightly.

In any case the simple patch built off the earlier work is now in Mesa 20.3-devel for debut later this quarter. This latest flurry of Tiger Lake optimizations is exciting with the Dell XPS 13 9310 continuing to churn through benchmarks and many more graphics/compute tests coming out this week with the Xe Graphics being the most compelling aspect of Tiger Lake so far.