New Mesa Vec4 Backend For Intel, Supports Their NIR Goals

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Mesa Vec4 Backend For Intel, Supports Their NIR Goals

Eduardo Lima Mitev of Igalia last week published a new vec4 back-end based on NIR for the Mesa i965 DRI driver. This work is part of implementing a NIR to Vec4 pass in order to allow using NIR for everything...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-i965-NIR-Vec4

[iznogood]

Phoronix: New Mesa Vec4 Backend For Intel, Supports Their NIR Goals

Eduardo Lima Mitev of Igalia last week published a new vec4 back-end based on NIR for the Mesa i965 DRI driver. This work is part of implementing a NIR to Vec4 pass in order to allow using NIR for everything...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-i965-NIR-Vec4

What is a vec4 backend and how does it relates to nir ? Any links ?

[smitty3268]

What is a vec4 backend and how does it relates to nir ? Any links ?

The vec4 backend is code supporting hardware that runs on vectors of 4 numbers at once, rather than being scaler hardware (operating on individual numbers).

Intel uses it for their vertex shaders on older generations. The new ones have switched to scaler mode, and fragment shaders are also scaler.