Valve Optimizations, D3D9 & GL4 Topped Mesa This Year
This year mainline Mesa received the Direct3D 9 (D3D9 or also known as "Gallium Nine") state tracker for allowing direct Direct3D support that can be utilized by Wine, much work towards OpenGL 4.0 compliance although they're not quite there yet, and many performance optimizations to Mesa -- in part thanks to Valve continuing to contract LunarG to work on the Linux graphics stack.
Those wishing to see where the OpenGL 4.0/4.1/4.2+ support is at for the end of 2014, see the in-Git live GL support state.
In terms of the most popular Mesa articles this year -- to go along with the various other Phoronix end-of-year tests and lists -- here they are:
Intel Continues Optimizing Counter-Strike: GO For Linux
Another patch hit mainline Mesa this past week that further improves the Linux performance of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive even though Valve has yet to publicly release the title for Linux gamers.
The Top Features Of Mesa 10.1 For Linux GPU Drivers
Mesa 10.1 should be released by the end of February if all goes according to plan. Here's a look at some of the most interesting features to be found in this next major release that provides the open-source 3D graphics drivers for the Linux desktop.
Valve-Sponsored Mesa Work Makes Games Load A Lot Faster
Improvements to Mesa done by LunarG and sponsored by Valve in a new open-source patch-set means that popular Linux games should take significantly less time to load -- including titles like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive -- by speeding up the shader compilation process.
Gallium3D Direct3D 9 For Wine Revived, Again
Back in 2010 there was native Direct3D 10/11 support on Linux via a Gallium3D state tracker implemented for the Radeon/Nouveau open-source drivers. The D3D 10/11 Linux support was ultimately removed but last year a Direct3D 9 state tracker was published with patches for it to be taken advantage of by Wine. That work has now been restored.
AMD Lands OpenMAX State Tracker In Mesa Gallium3D
The OpenMAX state tracker has appeared within Gallium3D in Mesa for another means of exposing MPEG2 and H.264 acceleration on the GPU.
Mesa Finishes Up OpenGL 3, Lots Of OpenGL 4 Ahead
Aside from the list of Mesa's supported OpenGL 3.x and 4.x extension documentation having been updated today for Nouveau OpenGL 3.3 support, Ian Romanick took the time to clean up the list and clarify a few items.
Major OpenGL 4.1 Feature Almost Ready For Mesa
Ian Romanick is planning to land a new OpenGL 4.1 extension in Mesa in the days ahead.
Mesa "Flatland" GLSL IR Proposal
A new GLSL intermediate representation (IR) approach has been proposed for Mesa in replacing its existing tree-based representation for shaders.
Direct3D 9 Support Might Land Within Mainline Mesa 3D Drivers
It looks like we could see the Direct3D 9 (Gallium3D Nine) state tracker land within Mesa! This state tracker can be used for accelerating D3D9-using Windows games via Wine and other purposes. The Gallium3D Nine patches are called for review as of this Saturday morning with ambitions of being merged to master.
Another OpenGL 4.2 Extension Is Hitting Mesa
Francisco Jerez has begun landing his driver patches into mainline Mesa for supporting the GL_ARB_shader_image_load_store extension as mandated by the OpenGL 4.2 specification.
In the days ahead will also be my Mesa + DRM tests from the end of last year compared to the end of this year, similar to this week's 2014 Year-End NVIDIA Linux Benchmark Comparison and 2014 Catalyst Linux Graphics Benchmarks Year-In-Review. If you appreciate Phoronix as the exclusive source for Linux graphics testing and news items, consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium for ad-free viewing, viewing of multi-page articles on a single page, and that it significantly goes to support this site as a complement to advertisements as the leading source of income to allow Phoronix.com to continue to operate. Thank you and stay tuned for more original Phoronix articles.
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