Intel Driver Integrates BRW Assembler

[Kayden]

The only other possibility that I had come across was Broadwell, and I figured it was a bit early to have code ready for that one (it's what's coming after Haswell). Also, the code that I was reading didn't seem to agree with that possibility.

Yeah, Broadwater vs. Broadwell is frustratingly similar. Especially when reading the abbreviations (BW/BRW vs. BDW/BWL).

[devius]

So, for someone who doesn't understand much of the GPU mumbo-jumbo this seems weird. Isn't SNA a means of 2D acceleration and aren't shaders related to 3D operations or something? Why are they in the same boat here?

[Kayden]

So, for someone who doesn't understand much of the GPU mumbo-jumbo this seems weird. Isn't SNA a means of 2D acceleration and aren't shaders related to 3D operations or something? Why are they in the same boat here?

All of the 2D acceleration is done using the GPU's 3D pipeline. There isn't really 2D-specific hardware these days.

[stqn]

So this shader assembler is only here to optimize 2D operations?

I already fail to see the point of accelerating perfectly fine 2D operations… I hope it will benefit real 3D stuff (games).

(PS: yet another article that doesn’t explain anything.)

[peter10]

The xf86-video-intel driver has picked up thousands of lines of new code today with the integration of a BRW assembler in order to compile shader programs on the fly and to remove inefficiencies and mistakes from current Intel shaders