Intel Mesa Driver Shows Support For OpenGL Games To Set/Get Their Own NIR

Via ARB_get_program_binary Intel is working on allowing programs to retrieve or load their own NIR representation.

The ARB_get_program_binary extension is mandated by OpenGL 4.1 for allowing a driver to add support for supplying and loading their own compiled / binary representation of an OpenGL program object. I.e. a game or application could basically handle an OpenGL cache on their own as one main use-case. The way the current Mesa/Gallium3D drivers expose this extension is by saying they don't have any formats supported, but Intel developers for their i965 driver are working on actual support.

Jordan Justen sent out 17 patches for the Intel driver to support ARB_get_program_binary so it can save/load a serialized NIR representation of a program. In the future they might also add another supported format of the Intel compiled "GEN" binary program.

Dota 2 is among the software that can make use of ARB_get_program_binary and does work with this Intel implementation.

More details via this patch series. More information on the ARB_get_program_binary extension via the OpenGL Registry.