Mesa 19.1 Flipping On Fast Color Clears For Intel Gen 11 Graphics

While it's looking like we are months out from seeing Intel "Gen 11" graphics in any Icelake parts and the Iris Gallium3D driver should be the default driver before year's end, the current "i965" Mesa driver has enabled fast color clears support for these next-generation graphics processors.

The Iris Gallium3D driver should be the default by year's end, roughly when we expect to see the first of the Icelake mobile processors. But with the i965 Mesa driver already offering Gen11 support currently, the support will likely be left in there for the foreseeable future until if/when Intel decides to drop support for Broadwell "Gen 8" graphics and newer when the Iris Gallium3D driver is so mature there is no reason left to use this current driver except for pre-Gen8 graphics support.

But until Iris is the default or those opting to use i965 with Gen11 graphics, the upcoming Mesa 19.1 release allows for fast color clears.

Intel developers have (re-)enabled the Gen11 fast color clears support after working out some issues in the earlier implementation. It was flipped on just in time for this week's Mesa 19.1 code branching.

The Iris driver also supports fast color clears already. Fast color clears in particular should help with better MSAA anti-aliasing performance.