Intel's Open-Source Gallium3D Driver Achieves OpenGL 4.6 Conformance

The Khronos Group has officially confirmed Intel's new "Iris" Gallium3D driver as being a conformant OpenGL 4.6 implementation.

The Khronos Group has awarded the Intel Iris Gallium3D driver as being a conformant OpenGL 4.6 implementation in successfully passing all of the necessary OpenGL CTS test cases. As we've been saying, the Intel Gallium3D driver is in great shape with Mesa 19.3 and these Khronos conformance results confirm that it's successfully behaving in-line with their specification.

The conformance was done with Mesa 19.3 on the very common "Gen9" graphics (from Skylake to pre-Cannonlake/Icelake) are considered conformant. The Intel Gen8 results for OpenGL 4.6 conformance are still pending. Gen8/Broadwell graphics are the oldest generation to be supported by this Intel open-source Gallium3D driver.

Iris lead developer Ken Graunke commented on the mailing list that Ice Lake / Gen11 graphics are "99% of the way there" to conformance and he's just hunting down one remaining bug.

While Intel Gallium3D is in great shape with Mesa 19.3, it's not until next quarter's Mesa 20.0 where they are planning to make it the default for Intel OpenGL on Gen8 graphics and newer in place of the i965 driver. The classic i965 driver will be sticking within the Mesa tree for supporting Gen7 Haswell graphics and older generations.