Mesa 20.1 Features Include Big Improvements For Open-Source Intel, Radeon Graphics Drivers

The release of Mesa 20.1 is imminent as the latest quarterly feature update to this collection of open-source OpenGL/Vulkan drivers predominantly in use by Linux systems. Here is a look at the many exciting improvements with Mesa 20.1.

Highlights of the Mesa 20.1 new features and improvements include:

- A Vulkan device selection layer for better dealing with multi-GPU setups.

- NIR vectorization support as a significant Intel graphics optimization.

- Continued work on ACO, the promising AMD back-end alternative to AMDGPU LLVM for the RADV driver.

- Gen11 performance optimizations across multiple fronts.

- Continued Intel Gen12 prepping including for Xe/DG1 discrete graphics hardware.

- Faster Intel Gen7 Vulkan compute performance.

- Radeon displayable DCC for Navi 12/14.

- RADV optimizations for id Tech games and other Vulkan titles under Wine / Steam Play.

- Experimental NIR support for the classic R600 Gallium3D driver.

- Initial Arm Bifrost rendering support with Panfrost.

- Shared Virtual Memory support for OpenCL Clover.

- Geometry shader support for TURNIP, the open-source Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno hardware.

- More OpenGL threading improvements.

- RadeonSI has a new option for better performance in CAD software.

- Improvements to its soft FP64 implementation.

- RADV has been expanding its profiling capabilities.

- A RADV option to zero out the vRAM.

- LLVMpipe tessellation shader support.

- Intel Blackhole render support.

Mesa 20.2 meanwhile is the version that has already been in development the past month on Mesa Git master for debut around the end of August.