
New OpenGL Driver for Intel Gen8 GPUs Merged into Mesa - obl
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2019-February/215576.html
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robert_foss
This is actually big news. It means that all of the major GPUs with an OSS
driver share a lot of code, specifically the gallium part of the mesa project.

This means that features like OpenCL can be implemented for one driver and
with minimal effort be ported to another GPU.

~~~
gumby
Does OpenCL still matter? I ask this totally from ignorance; I've heard people
tell me that openCL is too slow/low level/has an obsolete model for many years
but as a non-user (my work is in different domains) I can't tell if these
folks are impartial or have an axe to grind.

~~~
twtw
I have a hard time seeing a meaningful future for opencl.

Apple (the original creator of opencl) has deprecated it on their platforms in
favor of metal.

I think Intel has implementations, but IMO you are better off with ISPC if you
are targeting a CPU.

I have a hard time keeping up with AMD's overall direction, but the latest
ROCm stuff seems to focus on an implementation of CUDA AFAICT.

Nvidia apparently has no intention of focusing on opencl.

Support for opencl 2.0+ is poor. Some vendors have support, but most are
partial or language only (mostly meaning c++ for compute shaders, but not the
other features). IIRC, even AMDs ROCm opencl is not 2.0.

And then there are all the fpga/accelerator vendors. I don't have much
experience with opencl on these, but I expect they will also move away from
opencl - I'm interested to see what Xilinx does with Everest, since it will
supposedly be easier to develop for than traditional FPGAs.

Vulkan compute or implementations of cuda from other vendors seem much more
promising. OpenCL tried for a "one standard fits all compute," but I don't
think it has worked out that well. It leads to a "write once for all
platforms, optimize separately for each platform" at which point it's better
to just have different standards specialized for the target. For a long time
code written for one compiler wouldn't even compile with an implementation
from another vendor.

~~~
robert_foss
Khronos, the standards body behind Vulkan/OpenCL/OpenGL, is not aiming to
replace OpenCL with Vulkan Compute. But it is on the other hand introducing a
CUDA-like standard, that is called SYCL that could be implemented ontop of
OpenCL.

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est31
Kudos for intel for doing this. They not just open source their driver, they
also work with upstream to get it pushed there. This is what every vendor
should do. Looking at you, Nvidia.

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mises
Hmm, I wonder if this has something to do with Intel's upcoming dGPUs? Not
necessarily a bad thing, but having a scenario with lots of code reuse among
drivers and a common framework means easier/faster/better support for their
new stuff. Seems like a win for both Intel and the users.

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fulafel
Which drivers now use Gallium? I know the r600 driver for older AMD GPUs does,
what about AMDGPU?

~~~
zanny
AMDGPU is a kernel driver and generally has nothing to do with AMDGPU.

r600 and radeonsi are the Mesa drivers, and both are Gallium based.

I'm not aware of a Mesa driver in a condition of usability one would consider
practical not using Gallium. Freedreno, Nouveau, all AMD drivers, and the
Broadcom Videocore driver are all Gallium based.

~~~
floatboth
> I'm not aware of a Mesa driver in a condition of usability one would
> consider practical not using Gallium

uhhhhhh i965 (which is replaced by Iris but unfortunately only for
>=Broadwell, at least for now)

~~~
fulafel
s/is/may some day be/ :)

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NullPrefix
>* Supports only Broadwell and newer (Gen8+); drops support for the older
Gen4-7.5 GPUs, as well as Braswell/Cherrytrail

Meltdown/Spectre turned out not to be a reason big enough to upgrade from
Sandy/Ivy Bridge, so they had to find another way to "discontinue" current
users.

I guess classic i915 driver for mesa will be discontinued soon, left to bit
rot and then removed from Mesa as "potentially unsafe to use, because ...
memory errors cause RCE".

~~~
slacka
Open source drivers don't work the way proprietary drivers do. For example,
the Rage 128 from 1998 is still receiving updates in Mesa.[1] Before spreading
unfounded conspiracy theories, you should do some research.

[1] [https://bracecomputerlab.com/2018/06/08/selecting-ati-
techno...](https://bracecomputerlab.com/2018/06/08/selecting-ati-technologies-
rage-128-family-as-my-next-graphics-device-driver-development-target/)

~~~
iforgotpassword
I still see the 3dfx driver in my mesa folder... I'm surprised now since I
thought I read it was removed a year ago or so, but that might have been the
kernel driver.

