Mesa (computer graphics)


Mesa, also called Mesa3D and The Mesa 3D Graphics Library, is an open source implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics API specifications as well as OpenCL. Mesa translates these specifications to vendor-specific graphics hardware drivers.
Its most important users are two graphics drivers mostly developed and funded by Intel and AMD for their respective hardware. Proprietary graphics drivers replace all of Mesa, providing their own implementation of a graphics API. Open-source effort to write Mesa Nvidia drivers called Nouveau and NVK are developed mostly by the community.
Besides 3D applications such as games, modern display servers use OpenGL/EGL; therefore all graphics typically go through Mesa.
Mesa is hosted by freedesktop.org and was initiated in August 1993 by Brian Paul, who is still active in the project. Mesa was subsequently widely adopted and now contains numerous contributions from various individuals and corporations worldwide, including from the graphics hardware manufacturers of the Khronos Group that administer the OpenGL specification. For Linux, development has also been partially driven by crowdfunding.

Overview

Implementations of rendering APIs

Mesa is known as housing implementations of graphic APIs. Historically the main API that Mesa has implemented is OpenGL, along with other Khronos Group related specifications. But Mesa can implement other APIs and indeed it did with Glide and Direct3D 9 since July 2013. Mesa is also not specific to Unix-like operating systems: on Windows for example, Mesa provides an OpenGL API over DirectX.
Mesa implements a translation layer between a graphics API such as OpenGL and the graphics hardware drivers in the operating system kernel. The supported version of the different graphic APIs depends on the driver, because each hardware driver has its own implementation. This is especially true for the "classic" drivers, while the Gallium3D drivers share common code that tend to homogenize the supported extensions and versions.
Mesa maintains a support matrix with the status of the current OpenGL conformance visualized at. Mesa 10 complies with OpenGL 3.3 for Intel, AMD/ATI, and Nvidia GPU hardware. Mesa 11 was announced with some drivers being OpenGL 4.1 compliant.
Mesa 12 contains OpenGL 4.2 and 4.3 and Intel Vulkan 1.0 support.
Mesa 13 brought Intel support for OpenGL 4.4 and 4.5 and experimental AMD Vulkan 1.0 support through the community driver RADV. OpenGL ES 3.2 is possible with Intel Skylake.
1st stable version of 2017 is 17.0. Ready features are certified OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL 4.5 for Intel Haswell, OpenGL 4.3 for Nvidia Maxwell and Pascal.
Huge performance gain was measured with Maxwell 1. Maxwell-2-Cards are underclocked without Nvidia information.
The Khronos CTS test suite for OpenGL 4.4, 4.5 and OpenGL ES 3.0+ is in now Open Source and all tests for Mesa 13 and 17 are now possible without costs.
2nd stable version of 2017, 17.1.0, came out on 10 May 2017 with some interesting improvements. OpenGL 4.2+ for Intel Ivy Bridge and OpenGL 3.3+ for Intel Open SWR Rasterizer are 2 of the highlights.
Due to the modularized nature of OpenGL, Mesa can support extensions from newer versions of OpenGL without claiming full support for such versions. For example, in July 2016, Mesa supported OpenGL ES 3.1 but also all OpenGL ES 3.2 extensions except for five, as well as a number of extensions not part of any OpenGL or OpenGL ES version.
3rd Version 17.2 is available since September 2017 with some new OpenGL 4.6 features and velocity improvements in 3D for Intel and AMD. Only 1.4% of Tests fail for OpenGL 4.5 in Nouveau for Kepler.
4th Version 17.3 is ready since December 2017. Many improvements in many drivers are available. OpenGL 4.6 is nearly fully available. AMD Vulkan Driver RADV is now fully conformant in Khronos-Test.
1st version of 2018 is 18.0 and available since March 2018 by same scheme in 2017. Full OpenGL 4.6 support is not ready, but many features and improvements were successfully tested in RC3. 10-bit support for Intel i965 in Colors is also a Highlight. New is support for Intel Cannon Lake and AMD Vega with actual Linux Version. AMD Evergreen Chips are near OpenGL 4.5 support. Old AMD R600 or RV700 Chips can only support OpenGL 3.3 with some features of OpenGL 4.x. Freedreno is the Driver for Adreno Hardware and near OpenGL 3.3 support.
2nd version of 2018 is 18.1 and available since May. Target is Vulkan 1.1.72 in Intel ANV and AMD RADV driver. OpenGL 4.6 with spir-V is also main target. Permanent work is possible completion of Features and Optimization of drivers for older hardware like AMD R600/Evergreen, Nvidia Tesla and before, Fermi, Kepler or Intel Sandybridge, Ivybridge, Haswell or Broadwell. ARM Architecture made also great improvements in Adreno 3xx/4xx/5xx and Broadwell VC4/VC5 for Raspi with main target OpenGL ES.
3rd version of 2018 is 18.2 and available in calendar stable in September. OpenGL 4.6 with spir-V and Vulkan 1.1.80 are in WIP. The soft Driver for virtual machines VIRGL is ready for OpenGL 4.3 and OpenGL ES 3.2. RadeonSI is also ready for OpenGL ES 3.2. ASTC Texture Compression Support and Compatibility Modus Support for OpenGL 4.4 are other highlights in RadeonSI for AMD GCN Cards. New Vulkan 1.1 and more features for Intel and AMD are available. See more Details for Vulkan in Mesamatrix.
4th version of 2018 is 18.3 and released as stable Version 18.3.1 in December 2018. Many features in Detail and support of newer hardware are main parts. Full support of OpenGL 4.6 is not ready.
1st Version of 2019 is 19.0 and was now released at March. Full support of OpenGL 4.6 is not ready, but many improvements on this way are in all drivers.
2nd Version of 2019 is 19.1. Transition of TGSI to NIR is here one main Feature on way to OpenGL 4.6 with Spir-V and more OpenCL. RadeonSI runs well in dev-Version with NIR.
3rd Version of 2019 is 19.2. OpenGL 4.6 is Beta ready for new Intel Iris Driver.
4th Version of 2019 is 19.3. OpenGL 4.6 is ready for Intel i965 and optional for new Iris Driver.
First Version of 2020 is 20.0. Vulkan 1.2 is ready for AMD RADV and Intel ANV. Intel Iris is default for Intel Broadwell Gen 8+. RadeonSI driver switched to using NIR by default, instead of TGSI.
2nd Version of 2020 is 20.1. Many improvements are ready in many drivers. Zink is a new virtual driver for OpenGL over Vulkan.
3rd Version of 2020 is 20.2. OpenGL 3.0 for Zink is one new feature. LLVMpipe will support OpenGL 4.3+. ARM Panfrost is mostly improved with many modules. Shared virtual memory is possible for OpenCL in Nouveau with Pascal and higher.
4th Version of 2020 is 20.3. v3d and v3dv are new drivers for OpenGL and Vulkan 1.0 with Broadcom hardware like Raspberry Pi 4. OpenCL 1.2 is full supported in clover module. Zink support OpenGL 3.3+. LLVMpipe virtual driver support now OpenGL 4.5+ with 4.6 in view. Lavapipe as Vulkan Tree of LLVMpipe is merged.
In Mesa 21.0 d3d12 will be merged with OpenGL 3.0 to 3.3. Microsoft and Collabora develops new emulation d3d12 in WSL2 to Windows 10 with Direct 3D 12. OpenCL 1.2 is also target in d3d12. An acceleration of factor 2 to 5 is done in Benchmark SPECviewperf with improved OpenGL Code. Many Mesa 21.0 features improves performance. New Release 21.0.0 is public since 11 March 2021.
Mesa 21.1 is second release of year 2021. OpenGL 4.6+ and OpenGL ES 3.1+ is available for Zink. AMD Driver 600g can change to NIR with more possibilities for old Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 cards. Qualcomm Turnip reaches Vulkan 1.1+ and software emulation Lavapipe Vulkan 1.1+. Google VirtIO GPU Driver Venus with Vulkan 1.2+ is merged in experimental state with low performance in mesa main tree.
Mesa 21.2 is third release of year 2021. Google Virtual Vulkan IO Driver Venus will be official introduced with full Vulkan 1.2+ support. ARM Panfrost: OpenGL ES 3.1+ Support is available and panVK is the new Vulkan Driver. Initial support started for ARM Apple M1 with new driver Asahi. 21.2 is available since 4 August 2021.
An old plan is to split old drivers in a classic tree with many advantages in programming, support, bug fixing for the modern gallium 3D part.
One problem here is Intel i965 with support of Popular old hardware to Intel Haswell and before also with Windows 10 support. A new Gallium3D driver Crocus for Intel Gen 4 Graphics to Haswell is here in development to complete here the gallium3D area with possible split in the next time of year 2021. Crocus is optional available in 21.2. Amber branch is for old drivers without Gallium 3D Functions like Radeon R200, intel i915 and 965 with actual version 21.3.9.
In Version 22.0 Classic drivers are retired. Vulkan 1.3 is available for Intel Anvil and AMD RADV.
Microsoft introduces new driver „Dozen“ for WSL 2 in early development stage as Vulkan over d3d12 in Mesa 22.1.
RustiCL is available at 22.3 with official OpenCL 3.0 Conformance for Intel XE Graphics. Performance is equal and better to AMD ROCm with AMD 6700 XT Card.
A main development target of Mesa 23.0 was ray tracing for Vulkan.
Microsoft develops the Dozen driver for Vulkan in WSL. Vulkan 1.0+ with 80% 1.1 and 1.2 will be available in Mesa 23.2 after delay to 23.1. RustiCL for AMD hardware is available in 23.1.
VirGL for virtual machines jumps in Mesa 23.2 to OpenGL 4.6. Apple Asahi for Apple Arm Machines jumps from OpenGL 2.1 to 3.1 with 90% features of OpenGL 3.2 and 3.3 and OpenGL ES 2.0 to 3.0.
Microsoft Supports in WSL OpenGL 4.6+ in Mesa 24.0 with DirectX 12 translation driver dozen.

Table of Rendering APIs

Vulkan

The Khronos Group officially announced Vulkan API in March 2015, and officially released Vulkan 1.0 on 16 February 2016. Vulkan breaks compatibility with OpenGL and completely abandons its monolithic state machine concept. The developers of Gallium3D called Vulkan to be something along the lines of Gallium3D 2.0 – Gallium3D separates the code that implements the OpenGL state machine from the code that is specific to the hardware.
Version 1.3 is immediately available with Mesa 22.0. Hardware with support of OpenGL ES 3.1 should run at Vulkan Level 1.3 and before.
As Gallium3D ingests TGSI, Vulkan ingests SPIR-V.
Intel released their implementation of a Vulkan driver for their hardware the day the specification was officially released, but it was only mainlined in April and so became part of Mesa 12.0, released in July 2016. While already the i965 driver wasn't written according to the Gallium3D specifications, for the Vulkan driver it makes even less sense to flange it on top of Gallium3D. Similarly there is no technical reason to flange it with NIR, but yet Intel's employees implemented their Vulkan driver that way.
It is to be expected that AMD's own proprietary Vulkan driver, which was released in March, and was announced to be released as free and open-source software in the future and be mainlined into Mesa, also abandons Gallium3D.
RADV is a free project for AMD and is available since version 13. Conformance with Khronos-Test came in version 17.3. Actual is Full support of Vulkan 1.0 and 1.1 since Mesa 18.1.
Nvidia released their proprietary GeForce driver with Vulkan support at launch day and Imagination Technologies, Qualcomm and ARM have done the same or at least announced proprietary Vulkan drivers for Android and other operating systems. But when and whether additional free and open-source Vulkan implementations for these GPUs will show up, remains to be seen.
Mesa Software Driver VIRGL starts Vulkan Development in 2018 with GSOC projects for support of Virtual machines.
Lavapipe is a CPU-based Software Vulkan driver and the brother of LLVMpipe. Mesa Version 21.1 supports Vulkan 1.1+.
Google introduces Venus Vulkan Driver for virtual machines in Mesa 21.1 with full support for Vulkan 1.2+.
Qualcomm Turnip and Broadcom v3dv are new drivers for Qualcomm Adreno and Broadcom Raspberry 4 Hardware. Turnip is the Vulkan brother of freedreno for OpenGL. V3dv supports Vulkan 1.0+ since Mesa 20.3. In Version 21.1 Turnip supports Vulkan 1.1+.
Panfrost PanVK for ARM Mali is at way to Vulkan 1.1, but only 1.0 is stable available with Mesa 22.0.
Project Dozen is connecting direct 3D 12 with Vulkan for Linux Emulation WSL2 in Windows 10 and 11. In Mesa 23.2 Vulkan 1.0 is full conformant supported and 80% of 1.1 and 1.2.