It also enables OpenGL 4.3/GLES 3.1 support on r600 driver

Apr 1, 2018 04:21 GMT  ·  By

The major Mesa 18 open-source graphics stack for Linux-based operating system has been released earlier this week to further advance the Linux graphics drivers and it already started appearing in the main repos of various distros.

Mesa 18 is a massive update that promises to enhance the overall gaming experience for Intel and AMD Radeon GPU users. Finally switched to the Meson build system, the latest Mesa release introduces numerous improvements for existing OpenGL and Vulkan graphics drivers, as well as various new features.

Among the new features, we can mention support for Intel's recently released Cannon Lake microarchitecture, the successor of Ice Lake, on both the Intel i965 OpenGL and Intel ANV Vulkan drivers, and OpenGL 4.3 and OpenGL ES (GLES) 3.1 support on the r600/evergreen driver with hw FP64 (Double Point Precision Computing) support.

Better Vulkan support, RadeonSI gets VCN encode support

Both the Intel ANV and Radeon RADV Vulkan drivers received new capabilities through a bunch of extensions. While the ANV driver only got the VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf extension, the RADV driver now supports the VK_ANDROID_native_buffer, VK_AMD_shader_info, and VK_EXT_discard_rectangles extensions.

Furthermore, the VK_KHR_external_fence, VK_KHR_external_fence_capabilities, VK_KHR_external_fence_fd, VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2, and VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf extensions are supported as well in the RADV Vulkan graphics drivers, which is now considered a Vulkan conformant driver.

On the OpenGL front, the Intel i965 graphics driver now supports the GL_EXT_disjoint_timer_query extension on 6th generation and later Intel CPUs, as well as the disk shader cache feature when setting the MESA_GLSL_CACHE_DISABLE environment variable to "false." The Nouveau now supports the GL_ARB_bindless_texture nvc0/kepler+ extension.

The Freedreno driver supports new OpenGL extension as well, including GL_ARB_draw_indirect, GL_ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments, GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect, GL_ARB_stencil_texturing, GL_ARB_texture_gather, GL_ARB_texture_stencil8, GL_NV_texture_barrier, and EGL_IMG_context_priority, and disables GL_ARB_base_instance temporary on the newer A5xx hardware due to firmware issues.

Last but not least, the r600 driver received support for the GL_ARB_ES3_1_compatibility, GL_ARB_cull_distance, GL_ARB_enhanced_layouts, GL_ARB_pipeline_statistics_query, GL_ARB_shader_atomic_counter_ops, GL_ARB_shader_clock, and GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export extensions. On the other hand, EGL now support the EGL_EXT_pixel_format_float extension.

Other noteworthy changes include VCN encode support in the RadeonSI driver, support for RGBA/RGBX 1010102 formats in EGL, various Darwin/Apple fixes in GLX, multiple improvements in SWR, better MPEG12 support in OMX/Bellagio, and DRIRC workarounds for the Steamroll, Observer, and Refunct games, and Unreal 4 Editor.

The Mount & Blade: Warband game is now on the DRIRC mesa_glthread whitelist. If you want to enjoy the best possible gaming experience on your Linux computer, we strongly recommend that you update to Mesa 18 as soon as possible. Most probably, you'll be able to install Mesa 18 from the main repositories of your favorite OS in the coming weeks, but you can also download the sources.