Intel Is Getting Very Close With Its Last Extension For OpenGL 4.3

For Broadwell hardware and newer, this week marked the milestone of the Intel Mesa driver exposing OpenGL 4.2 support. However, they are only one extension away from OpenGL 4.3 compliance for the newer Intel graphics hardware and a new version of that patch-set was just posted.

Jason Ekstrand on Friday published his second revision of the patches for wiring in the ARB/KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior within the Intel Mesa driver. ARB_robust_buffer_access_behavior is needed for OpenGL 4.3 and KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior is needed for OpenGL 4.5.

Once these patches land, the Intel Mesa driver will be at OpenGL 4.3 compliance for Broadwell hardware and newer. But these buffer access behavior extensions are support on Haswell and newer along with Bay Trail, so that's a bit of good news for those still using older Intel graphics hardware.

Also related for the GL bring-up is the SIMD32 patches published a few hours ago by Francisco Jerez.

It's looking quite possible that for Mesa's September release Intel could be at OpenGL 4.5 compliance. That's a huge milestone and would be exciting to see. Of course, the game isn't over though for OpenGL and the next revision is expected in August.