Gallium3D Gets Patches For ARB_get_program_binary, Complementing Intel's Work

Earlier this month Intel open-source developers posted their patches for implementing OpenGL's ARB_get_program_binary extension, which basically allows games/applications to get and set their own compiled programs. This work has now been revised and extended to also support the Gallium3D drivers.

Timothy Arceri, working for Valve, has taken Intel's patches and revised them while not just supporting the i965 driver now but also Gallium3D drivers. In the case of Gallium3D drivers, the ARB_get_program_binary extension can set/get the compiled shaders/programs as TGSI (Gallium3D's IR) while the Intel driver relies upon NIR at this point and in the future might support binaries of the Intel GEN hardware instructions. Using the ARB_get_program_binary by the application/game is basically like handling the OpenGL compiled shader caching on its own, which since earlier this year has been supported by Mesa itself should the application not take up those responsibilities.

Like the Mesa on-disk shader caching, the ARB_get_program_binary will only work with binaries generated on that same exact Mesa build and for the same graphics hardware.

Arceri has confirmed these ARB_get_program_binary patches are passing the relevant conformance/regression tests and also allows for the Dead Island game to work, which had been relying upon this extension.

The patches for now are on Mesa-dev but will hopefully land in Mesa 17.4 Git soon.