NIR is the new intermediate representation used by Mesa. Currently the Mesa Intel, Freedreno, and VC4 drivers make use of this code.

NIR Articles & Reviews

RadeonSI NIR Benchmarks Show Great Progress With Mesa 20.0   Display Drivers   2019-12-06
Running The RadeonSI NIR Back-End With Mesa 19.1 Git   Display Drivers   2019-02-10

NIR Linux & Open-Source News

Radeon R300 Open-Source Driver Continues Seeing New Improvements In 2024   AMD   2024-01-30
Mesa 24.0-rc3 Up For Testing, Mesa 23.3.4 Out As Stable   Mesa   2024-01-24
Mesa RADV Driver Baking Improvements For VKD3D-Proton With AMD FSR3   Mesa   2024-01-07
The Open-Source ATI R300 Graphics Driver Is Still Being Improved Upon In 2024   Radeon   2024-01-04
Mesa 24.0 Receives Further TGSI-To-NIR Conversion Work For AMD RadeonSI   Radeon   2024-01-02
Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver Begins Working On Pipeline Caching   Mesa   2023-09-28
Radeon R600g Driver Retires Its SB Optimizer   Radeon   2023-08-10
AMD Linux Graphics No Longer Unusable For Blender Developers: 251 To 9 Seconds Speed-Up   Mesa   2023-07-25
The Old ATI R300 Open-Source Driver Sees Improvements For OpenGL, WineD3D Apps/Games   Mesa   2023-06-13
VMware SVGA Graphics Driver Switches To NIR By Default   Mesa   2023-06-12
The Old Radeon "R600g" Gallium3D Driver Drops Its TGSI Code Path   Radeon   2023-04-27
RADV Lands Shader Caching For Graphics Pipeline Libraries   Radeon   2023-04-04
Mesa Zink Change Leads To 50% Reduction In Memory Utilization   Mesa   2023-04-03
Pending RADV Driver Change Leads To Much Lower System RAM Use For Some Games   Radeon   2023-03-27
Mesa 23.0.1 Released With Many Fixes For Intel / AMD / Zink   Mesa   2023-03-26
Microsoft's Dozen Up To A 98.5% Pass Rate For Vulkan 1.0   Microsoft   2023-01-10
The Old Radeon "R600" Open-Source Gallium3D Driver Now Enables SPIR-V   Radeon   2023-01-02
Mesa 22.3.1 Released - Led By Intel & Radeon Driver Fixes   Mesa   2022-12-15
RADV Vulkan Driver Making Progress On Portal RTX Support   Mesa   2022-12-14
Mesa 22.2.5 Released To End Out The Series   Mesa   2022-12-10
Mesa 22.3 Will Hopefully Be Released Next Week With Improved Vulkan Drivers, Rusticl   Mesa   2022-11-17
NVK Vulkan Driver Starting Work On New Compiler   Nouveau   2022-11-08
Panfrost Gallium3D Driver Wires Up Mesa Shader Disk Cache Support   Mesa   2022-11-03
Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan Implements Front-End Shader Caching   Mesa   2022-11-01
Rusticl Support For AMD RadeonSI Driver Being Worked On   Mesa   2022-09-26
Radeon R600 Gallium3D Switches To Modern NIR Backend By Default   Radeon   2022-09-23
Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Lands A "Bunch" Of Ray Query Fixes   Intel   2022-09-23
Mesa 22.2 Released With AMD RDNA3 Prep, Intel Arc Graphics, Many Vulkan Improvements   Mesa   2022-09-20
Intel's Open-Source Driver Lands Vulkan Mesh Shader Support   Intel   2022-09-02
R600 Gallium3D Driver Receives NIR Backend Fixes For Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Series   Radeon   2022-08-21
RADV Radeon Vulkan Driver Begins Landing Graphics Pipeline Library Support   Radeon   2022-08-17
Mesa 22.2-rc1 Released With AMD RDNA3 & Intel Alchemist Primed, Vulkan Additions   Mesa   2022-08-03
Mesa's Radeon R600g Driver Adds NIR Support For Pre-Evergreen GPUs   Mesa   2022-08-01
Rewritten R600g NIR Backend Merged For Mesa 22.2 - Improves Radeon HD 5000/6000 Series   Mesa   2022-07-07
Microsoft's "Dzn" Vulkan-On-D3D12 Adds Working Pipeline Cache   Microsoft   2022-06-29
Mesa's Lima Gallium3D Driver Lands 4x MSAA Support   Mesa   2022-06-28
Linux "RADV" Radeon Driver Gets A Big Speed-Up For 16-bit FidelityFX Super Resolution   Radeon   2022-06-27
Rewritten NIR Code For Old Radeon "R600" Linux Driver Improves Performance In 2022   Radeon   2022-06-22
Mesa 22.1.2 Released With Many OpenGL / Vulkan Driver Fixes   Mesa   2022-06-16
More Old GLSL Code Is Gutted From Mesa 22.2   Mesa   2022-06-06
Mesa 22.1.1 Released With Many Open-Source Graphics Driver Fixes   Mesa   2022-06-01
Mesa 22.1 Released With Many Vulkan Improvements, Kopper For Zink, Imagination Driver   Mesa   2022-05-18
Mesa 22.2 Continues Modernizing With More GLSL IR Code Replaced By NIR   Mesa   2022-05-16
Improved Vulkan Profiling Support For Raspberry Pi's V3DV Driver   Raspberry Pi   2022-05-09
Mesa 22.2 Lands The Big Removal Of Old GLSL-To-TGSI Path, Now Always Going Through NIR   Mesa   2022-05-05
VMware's SVGA Gallium3D Driver Getting NIR'ed   Mesa   2022-05-05
Nouveau Switches Over To NIR Backend By Default   Nouveau   2022-04-30
Open-Source R600g Driver For Old AMD GPUs Is Seeing New Activity To Improve GPU Compute   Radeon   2022-04-27
Mesa's New OpenCL Stack "Rusticl" Nearing Formal Support For OpenCL 3.0   Mesa   2022-04-22
Mesa 22.1-rc2 Released With Many Zink, Intel, AMD Driver Fixes   Mesa   2022-04-21
Mesa Prepares To Drop Old GLSL-To-TGSI - Big Code Removal, Win For Performance & Fixes   Mesa   2022-04-20
R600 Gallium3D Driver For Old Radeon GPUs To See Rewritten NIR Backend   Radeon   2022-04-15
Mesa 22.1-rc1 Brings Radeon Vulkan Enhancements, Imagination Driver & Microsoft Dozen   Mesa   2022-04-14
Intel IGC 1.0.10713 Adds Ray-Tracing Support   Intel   2022-03-24
Imagination Tech Publishes Open-Source PowerVR Vulkan Driver For Mesa   Vulkan   2022-03-04
Mesa's Virgl Preparing To Transition To Using NIR Over TGSI   Virtualization   2022-02-20
NVIDIA GeForce FX / 6 / 7 Series GPUs Get Notable Open-Source Driver Improvement In 2022   NVIDIA   2022-02-16
Etnaviv Strips Out Its TGSI Backend In Favor Of NIR   Mesa   2022-02-13
Vulkan Ray-Tracing's VK_KHR_ray_query Lands For Intel's Open-Source Linux Driver   Intel   2022-02-08
NIR Continues Successfully Serving The Needs Of Mesa, Better Suited Than LLVM   Mesa   2022-01-29
Mesa 21.3.3 Released With Fixes For Old ATI R300~R500 GPUs, RADV Fixes Too   Mesa   2021-12-29
Microsoft's Mesa D3D12 Gallium3D Code Adds Support For OpenGL SSBOs   Microsoft   2021-12-28
Intel's Lead Developer Of Their Linux Vulkan Driver Has Left The Company   Intel   2021-12-19
RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver Wires Up Wave32 Improvements For RDNA GPUs   Radeon   2021-12-13
Radeon R300 Driver Lands NIR-To-TGSI Code, Old NVIDIA Driver Eyes It Too   Mesa   2021-12-10
Radeon Linux Driver Has A Huge Optimization Two Decades Later For ATI R300~R500 GPUs   Mesa   2021-12-09
Intel Continues Making Preparations For Ray-Tracing With Their Linux Graphics Driver   Intel   2021-12-05
Freedreno Gallium3D Lands Basic Support For "Clover" OpenCL   Mesa   2021-11-16
Etnaviv Gallium3D Switches Over To NIR By Default   Mesa   2021-11-08
Intel Lands Initial Code For Mesh Shaders Within Mesa   Intel   2021-08-28
Mesa 21.3 LLVMpipe Enables OpenGL 4.5 Compatibility Profile Support   Mesa   2021-08-17
AMD Drops Pre-Polaris GPU Support From Their Mainline Radeon Software Driver   Radeon   2021-06-22
Intel i915g Mesa Driver Now Goes Goes Through NIR, Fixes Some Past Test Failures   Intel   2021-06-18
Mesa 21.1 Released With RADV Variable Rate Shading, More Intel Vulkan Improvements   Mesa   2021-05-05
Mesa 21.1-rc1 Released With RADV Optimizations, Faster Zink, Many Other New Features   Mesa   2021-04-14
Radeon R600 Gallium3D Flips On OpenGL 4.5 For NIR Backend   Radeon   2021-03-03
Mesa's R600 Driver Nears Feature Complete NIR Support For Radeon HD 5000/6000 Series   Radeon   2021-01-20
Radeon "RADV" Vulkan Driver Adds Sparse Memory Support - Will Help Some D3D12 Games   Radeon   2021-01-11
Another NVIDIA Engineer Just Made His First Contribution To Mesa   NVIDIA   2021-01-08
Mesa Enjoyed A Record-Setting Year With Intel G3D Default, RADV ACO, Faster Performance   Mesa   2021-01-01
Microsoft Adds SPIR-V To DXIL Library In Mesa - With A Focus On WebGPU Support   Microsoft   2020-12-22
Mesa 20.3 Released With Big Improvements For Open-Source Graphics Drivers   Mesa   2020-12-03
Microsoft Begins Landing Changes For Cross-Platform Support With Their Mesa D3D12 Code   Microsoft   2020-12-02
Airlie: "Why Sharing Code With Windows Isn't Always A Win"   Mesa   2020-11-11
Mesa 21.0 Merges Direct3D 12 Gallium3D Driver   Microsoft   2020-11-10
Intel Lands Vulkan Ray-Tracing Prep Work In Mesa 20.3   Mesa   2020-11-06
NIR-To-TGSI Support Added To Mesa 20.3   Mesa   2020-10-20
RADV ACO Lands NGG Geometry Shader Support   Mesa   2020-10-10
Mesa 20.2 Released With RADV ACO By Default, Initial RDNA2 Graphics Support   Mesa   2020-09-29
Mesa 20.3 Can Now Consume SPIR-V Binaries Generated By LLVM's libclc   Microsoft   2020-09-26
Open-Source Vivante Driver In Some Cases Outperforming Proprietary Driver   Mesa   2020-09-21
Etnaviv Gallium3D Adds On-Disk Shader Cache Support   Mesa   2020-09-18
Microsoft Has A Large Presence At This Year's X.Org Conference   X.Org   2020-09-17
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Linux Driver/Support Expectations   NVIDIA   2020-09-15
Zink OpenGL-Over-Vulkan Driver - Performance Is Turning Out Better Than Expected   Vulkan   2020-09-08
Mesa Softpipe Set To See Better Performance, Introducing New NIR-To-TGSI Path   Mesa   2020-08-26
Microsoft Doubles Their Commits To Mesa This Week   Microsoft   2020-08-18
OpenGL 4.5 Now Enabled For LLVMpipe With Mesa 20.3, To Be Back-Ported For 20.2   Mesa   2020-08-17
VALLIUM Merged Into Mesa 20.3 As Vulkan Front-End To Gallium3D   Mesa   2020-08-17
Intel Iris Gallium3D Driver Adds Compute Kernel Support In Mesa 20.3   Intel   2020-08-12
R600 Gallium3D Now Has Compute Shaders Working With NIR   Radeon   2020-08-10
Mesa 20.2 Development Ends After Many New Features Land   Mesa   2020-08-06
Radeon R600 Gallium3D NIR Backend Continues Advancing   Radeon   2020-07-20
Panfrost Gallium3D Driver Enables Working FP16 Support   Mesa   2020-07-18
RADV ACO SMEM Patches Land - Taking ACO To Feature Parity With AMDGPU LLVM   Mesa   2020-06-24
Mesa 20.0.8 Released To End Out The Series   Mesa   2020-06-12
Open-Source 3D/Compute Finally Materializing For NVIDIA Volta / Turing GPUs   Nouveau   2020-06-09
Mesa 20.1 Released With Numerous Linux Graphics Driver Improvements   Mesa   2020-05-27
Mesa 20.1 Features Include Big Improvements For Open-Source Intel, Radeon Graphics Drivers   Mesa   2020-05-27
Mesa 20.1-RC3 Released With Another Week Worth Of Fixes Plus Intel Rocket Lake Support   Mesa   2020-05-14
Mesa 20.2 Picks Up A New Disk Cache: TGSI-To-NIR Caching   Mesa   2020-05-13
R600 Gallium3D Driver Lands Tesselation Support In Time For Mesa 20.1   Mesa   2020-04-28
Mesa 20.0.5 Released With The Latest Batch Of Intel/AMD Graphics Driver Fixes   Mesa   2020-04-22
NIR Vectorization Lands In Mesa 20.1 For Big Intel Graphics Performance Boost   Mesa   2020-04-03
Mesa 20.0.3 Released With Latest Open-Source Graphics Driver Fixes   Mesa   2020-04-02
Intel NIR I/O Vectorization Ported From The AMD ACO Back-End - ~10% Performance Boost   Intel   2020-03-29
Radeon OpenGL Driver Lands Experimental Option To Boost Performance For CAD Software   Radeon   2020-03-26
Microsoft + Collabora Working To Map OpenGL/OpenCL Over DirectX 12   Microsoft   2020-03-24
Mesa 20.1 Sees Big Optimizations To Its Soft FP64 Implementation   Mesa   2020-03-19
LLVMpipe Tessellation Shader Support Is Now Working - Runs Unigine Heaven   Mesa   2020-02-28
Radeon R600 Gallium3D Lands NIR Support In Mesa 20.1   Mesa   2020-02-10
Mesa 20.0-RC2 Brings Many Intel Vulkan + OpenGL Gallium3D Driver Fixes   Mesa   2020-02-07
Intel's Linux Graphics Stack Is Close To Landing A Code-Generator Generator   Intel   2020-02-03
Nouveau Still Pushing Forward In 2020 Thanks To Red Hat But Community Developers Leaving   Nouveau   2020-02-01
Mesa 20.0-rc1 Released With Intel Gallium3D Default, OpenGL 4.6 for RadeonSI, Vulkan 1.2   Mesa   2020-01-30
Mesa 20.0 Feature Development Is Ending Next Week   Mesa   2020-01-23
Mesa's NIR Linker Taking On More Duties - Further Enhancing Linker Speed   Mesa   2020-01-08
AMD Drops TGSI Support From Their RadeonSI OpenGL Driver   Radeon   2020-01-07
Mesa Development Activity Was Up By ~20% In 2019, Just Under 3 Million Lines Of Code   Mesa   2020-01-03
Mesa's Radeon R600 Gallium3D Driver Now Has NIR Support Under Review   Mesa   2019-12-30
Gallium3D's Software Rasterizers Are Close To Having OpenGL Tessellation Support   Mesa   2019-12-30
Mesa 20.0's LLVMpipe Now Supports Running OpenCL On The CPU   Mesa   2019-12-27
Mesa's LLVMpipe Software OpenGL Driver Now Uses NIR By Default   Mesa   2019-12-21
RadeonSI Driver Switches To NIR, Thereby Enabling OpenGL 4.6 By Default For AMD GPUs   Mesa   2019-12-10
Mesa Devs Discuss Potentially Dropping Non-Gallium Drivers Or Forking Code For Gallium   Mesa   2019-12-04
Gallium3D's LLVMpipe Lands NIR Support Plus Radeon R600g NIR Support Is Forthcoming   Mesa   2019-11-28
AMD's RadeonSI Driver Finally Enables OpenGL 4.6 But You Need To First Enable NIR   Radeon   2019-11-27
Mesa 20.0 Lands A Load/Store Vectorizer As Latest "ACO" Backend Improvement   Mesa   2019-11-26
Mesa 19.3.0 Not Expected Until December - RC4 Released With ACO Fixes   Mesa   2019-11-21
Ice Lake, Ryzen 9, Kernel Happenings & Other Highlights For An Exciting October   Phoronix   2019-11-01
Mesa 19.3-RC1 Released With OpenGL 4.6 For Intel, Many Vulkan Driver Improvements   Mesa   2019-10-30
Zink Is Almost In Mesa For Offering OpenGL 2.1 / GLES 2.0 Over Vulkan   Mesa   2019-10-24
Gallium3D's Mesa State Tracker Sees "Mega Cleanup" For NIR In Mesa 19.3   Mesa   2019-10-18
Raspberry Pi 4's V3D Mesa Driver Nearing OpenGL ES 3.1   Mesa   2019-10-11
Intel Has Been Quietly Developing A New Backend Compiler For Their OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers   Intel   2019-10-03
Igalia Is Working On "mediump" Support For Mesa To Help With OpenGL ES Performance   Mesa   2019-10-03
Mesa 19.2 Released With Navi Support, Much Improved Intel Gallium3D   Mesa   2019-09-25
Nouveau Finally Lands SPIR-V Support As Part Of OpenCL Push   Nouveau   2019-09-21
Valve's ACO Shader Compiler Under Review For The Mesa Radeon Vulkan Driver   Radeon   2019-09-18
Mesa 19.2-RC3 Released While Final Release Expected Around Month's End   Mesa   2019-09-12