Intel's OpenGL Linux Driver Now Has OpenGL 4.6 Support For Mesa 19.2

Two years after the OpenGL 4.6 specification was announced, Intel's open-source OpenGL Linux driver is now officially advertising the support after today landing the remaining SPIR-V enablement work.

For the better part of the past two years the Intel OpenGL Linux drivers were held up from having GL 4.6 due to the ARB_gl_spirv / ARB_spirv_extensions extensions for better interoperability with Vulkan. But today those extensions are now crossed off the list and OpenGL 4.6 is finally in Mesa core with Intel's i965 driver being the first.

This OpenGL 4.6 support is for the existing i965 driver while Iris Gallium3D should be following suit shortly. This OpenGL 4.6 support is available for Broadwell "Gen 8" graphics hardware and newer.

While Mesa 19.2 was branched yesterday, Mesa3D release manager Emil Velikov has already said he's willing to back-port these patches into the Mesa 19.2 branch. Mesa 19.2.0 is expected to be out in mid-September with OpenGL 4.6 support now being the latest feature for Intel Linux users. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the remaining RadeonSI Gallium3D OpenGL 4.6 bits will be picked up in time, but hopefully for next quarter's Mesa 19.3 milestone.