OpenGL 4.1 Extension Implemented For Intel Mesa Sandy Bridge

In January of 2014 there was ARB_viewport_array added to the Intel Mesa driver, an extension needed for OpenGL 4.1 compliance, but at the time it was only enabled for Ivy Bridge graphics hardware and newer. Intel has now extended that support back to Sandy Bridge.

More than one year after adding the initial ARB_viewport_array code, Chris Forbes has extended the support to cover Sandy Bridge via some commits that landed this morning. Additionally, the AMD_vertex_shader_viewport_index is also now supported by Intel Sandy Bridge "Gen6" graphics hardware too.

Sandy Bridge hardware won't support all of GL4, but at least it's interesting to see Sandy Bridge still getting some love with the bulk of the open-source Intel Linux developer focus currently being on Broadwell, Cherry Trail / Braswell, and Skylake enablement under Linux. Sandy Bridge would also have a tough time running modern OpenGL 4.x games due to the improvements Intel's made in the past few years with Ivy Bridge, Haswell, and Broadwell.