Intel Has A Ton Of Developers Working On Their Linux Graphics Stack

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Has A Ton Of Developers Working On Their Linux Graphics Stack

Back in 2013 we heard Intel had 20~30 full-time developers on their Linux graphics driver team. Since then, they've only been hiring more developers. Based on email activity at least, here's a new number...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Dozens-Linux-Graphics

[Kano]

It is not really unexpected that Intel has quite a few developers working on Linux/Android drivers. Even 3rd party developers like Intel hardware (like LunarG for ilo/vulkan) - so it seems the chips are well documented. Especially OpenGL ES 3.1 support and maybe even Vulkan should be on a high priority for Android devices - would be nice if those work without binary parts. Certainly enabling new hardware needs lots of resources too, at least Intel tries to support the hardware at launch or a bit later compared to years later (look at AMD Tonga out-of-the-box Linux experience without binary driver). Very interesting is always the VAAPI Intel source code - you know much more about the "real" hardware accelleration than you can read about "Windows" specs which sometimes uses a hybrid approach - same for Nvidia btw. (VDPAU specs in the readme).

[Danny3]

This is the reason why my next laptop will have a intel cpu and no dedicared gpu

[Kano]

Yes, i would like to have a Skylake only laptop as well, but i don't think i can afford it. I mainly use a Nexus 7 tablet instead - faster than my old Atom x64 based netbook.

[sunweb]

Intel is up to something. They will polish drivers and have incremental updates to them as their graphics advances further and then at some point will present dedicated GPUs to us with already tested drivers for all main platforms(Linux mainly ofcourse).

[Kano]

There is no reason for Intel to sell dedicated GPUs, why do you think Xbox One/PS4 don't use those? AMD should really watch what Intel does, not that they will lose for Xbox One+/PS5.

[FLHerne]

...and then at some point will present dedicated GPUs to us with already tested drivers for all main platforms(Linux mainly ofcourse).

I don't think they'll do discrete GPUs ever, just increasingly more powerful integrated ones. A scaled-up Iris Pro with more eDRAM, using as much die area as the graphics in one of AMD's IGPs, would be good enough for almost all consumers. Intel already make discrete chips (Xeon Phi) for the sort of workloads that Tesla and FirePro cards get used for. Serious gamers and perhaps some CAD folks are left out, but on the scale Intel work at that's a fairly niche market.

[blackiwid]

This is the reason why my next laptop will have a intel cpu and no dedicared gpu

dont forget that intel build in in most recent cpus or motherboard bridges fsf or txt options, that the librem tries to adress. with that garbage on board it becomes basicly impossible for thirdparty to release or install a coreboot not to mention libreboot bios/uefi replacement. If thats the future and we dont fight it we have lost against nsa for good.

So in my opinion now is the time to fight this, if every vendor implements such garbage they will not get rid of it afterwards. And intel gets worse some gpus now also need a firmware blob for the gpu, that was the reason fsf did not recommend amd and told people to buy (old) Nvidia cards. So even that small advantage is gone.

So either I buy a librem kind of hardware (kind of to big 13.3" and to expensive and I am pretty happy with my x220 thinkpad that hasn`t this newer signed bios garbage) or I try to find in a few years hopfully the first amd business book ever made (yes I know dell made in last 2000 years one or 2 bad ones)

[SystemCrasher]

Intel has a ton of developers... however, you can still see something "funny" like this:

OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 10.5.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 10.5.2
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16


Hell yeah, Intel hardware can support brand new GL 2.1 as of 2015. Notice it is not ES, but GL. And GL ES 1.x . I'm pretty sure same GPU can do at least GL 3.x in windows, if not GL 4.x.

So I wonder what their huge team actually does. All AMD GPUs I have are performing way better than THAT, especially taking into account much smaller dev team.

[SXX⁣]

Last time I checked it out of my personal interest there was following number of developers:

• 27+ developers contributed to Mesa.
• 24+ of different developers contributed to i915 kernel driver.
• 14 developers worked on Beignet.

Of course some guys work on both Mesa and kernel, but I only count them once. I only counted actual commit authors from cgit.