VMware's Virtual Gallium3D Driver Will Finally Support OpenGL 3

VMware's vmwgfx virtual Linux graphics stack for supporting 2D/3D acceleration within guest VMs running their virtualization software will finally allow for OpenGL 3.x support.

Longtime open-source graphics developer Thomas Hellstrom at VMware has published some new vmwgfx DRM patches he hopes to land for Linux 4.3.

While the VMWgfx DRM driver updates tend to not be too dramatic, the Linux 4.3 -next update should be interesting. This patch-set has support for screen targets for scanout buffers, a device command buffer queue to replace their old ring FIFO, and support for OpenGL 3. Hellstrom explained of the GL3 functionality, "support for a new device functionality called 'DX' that enables us to support GL3. Mesa gallium driver support for GL3 is about to be published. The patches for DX support have been heavily squashed." Details via this mailing list post.

We're waiting to see the vmwgfx Gallium3D driver patches for finally turning on OpenGL 3 for this driver. While GL3 hasn't been supported yet, at least VMware's 3D acceleration support for guest virtual machines has worked better in my opinion more reliably and performant than VirtualBox. The open-source KVM/QEMU/Virt-IO stack is meanwhile still waiting on Virgil 3D to get into shape.

It looks like Linux 4.3 should be another interesting release cycle. It will be benchmarked daily as always via LinuxBenchmarking.com and my more specialized tests on Phoronix.com.