Testing Intel's New GLSL Mesa Compiler With ATI Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Testing Intel's New GLSL Mesa Compiler With ATI Graphics

With Intel developers earlier this week expressing their plans to merge their new GLSL compiler into Mesa by the end of next month, which besides providing various shader compiler optimizations and being a better framework going forward is already set to correct 50+ bugs, we decided to try out this Mesa "GLSL2" compiler. However, as Intel explicitly stated they haven't tested this new GL Shading Language compiler that's been in development for months with any other hardware drivers (or even Gallium3D) besides their own Intel DRI driver, we decided to see how well it works with the open-source Radeon classic and Gallium3D drivers. It ended up being both good and bad.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15140

[MùPùF]

What about performance? What kind of improvements can we expect?

The last 3 articles are awesome Michael, it reminds me very well why I like to visit phoronix.

[xeros]

What about performance? What kind of improvements can we expect?

The last 3 articles are awesome Michael, it reminds me very well why I like to visit phoronix.

Yes, we'd like to see a benchmark and some picture quality comparision between old and new GLSL compiler (even some screenshots from working fine games, too).

Btw. good to know that it's working better than expected.
I've expected more problems with ATI cards, too.

[Michael]

Benchmarks are coming in another, later article.

[curaga]

Hm, no reference "correctly rendered" screenshot?

I don't play Warsow, so I have no idea what it's supposed to look like...

[rob2687]

So with this new compiler how would the radeon(r300c) driver compare with the gallium driver?

[smitty3268]

So with this new compiler how would the radeon(r300c) driver compare with the gallium driver?

This is used by both classic and gallium drivers, so there shouldn't really be any difference.

[7oby]

What about performance?

Performance comparisons would have to be limited to those benchmarks/games, where image quality and complexity is exactly the same. Otherwise the "broken" driver/GLSL compiler may drop textures and oversimplify the situation for later render stages and thus result in higher framerates.

Has been observed multiple times with broken drivers.

The last 3 articles are awesome Michael, it reminds me very well why I like to visit phoronix.

Agreed!

[marek]

So with this new compiler how would the radeon(r300c) driver compare with the gallium driver?

r300c doesn't support GLSL, so any improvements there are out of the question.

r300g may benefit from this, but only in apps which use GLSL! (i.e. not the quake3 engine)

[pingufunkybeat]

Later versions of ioquake3 do use GLSL for some effects.