Imagination Technologies has announced the support for the OpenGL 4.6 graphics API in its GPUs, achieved through the open driver Zink, developed in the Mesa project repository. Zink provides an OpenGL implementation on top of Vulkan, enabling hardware-accelerated OpenGL on devices that only support the Vulkan API. The performance of Zink is close to that of native OpenGL implementations, allowing hardware manufacturers to save resources by only supporting the Vulkan API in their GPUs and implementing OpenGL through a layer. Imagination Technologies has become the first manufacturer to utilize this approach.
The prepared solution has successfully passed verification in the CTS (Khronos Conformance Test Suite) test set and is recognized as fully compatible with the OpenGL 4.6 specification. This is the first Zink-based product officially certified by the Khronos organization. According to Khronos criteria, should another Zink-based implementation achieve certification, the Zink driver as a universal layer will also be deemed officially compatible with OpenGL 4.6. Obtaining the certificate allows for official claims of compatibility with graphics standards and the use of associated Khronos trademarks.
Other works highlight the development by Imagination Technologies of an open driver set for its GPUs based on the Rogue architecture. The set includes a DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver for the Linux kernel, a driver with initial Vulkan 1.0 implementation, and a set of firmware for GPUs. The Vulkan driver has already been integrated into the main Mesa repository, while the DRM driver is in preparation for inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel. In the future, support for Zink can be added to this set, resulting in a fully open graphics stack for Imagination hardware that supports both OpenGL and Vulkan.
Source: opennet.ru
