[Mesa-dev] Mesa llvmpipe for WebGL software rendering

[Michel Dänzer]

On Don, 2012-03-01 at 06:05 -0800, Benoit Jacob wrote: 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > On Mit, 2012-02-29 at 16:06 -0800, Benoit Jacob wrote:
> > > 
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > On Die, 2012-02-28 at 09:08 -0800, Benoit Jacob wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > At Mozilla we've been wondering if we could get a good software
> > > > > fallback for users who can't get hardware-accelerated WebGL.
> > > > > Mesa
> > > > > llvmpipe seems like the best open source OpenGL renderer,
> > > > > right? At
> > > > > least, it performed superbly in our quick tests.
> > > > 
> > > > [...]
> > > > 
> > > > > 3. On GNU/Linux: why isn't Mesa llvmpipe installed by default
> > > > > by
> > > > > most
> > > > > distros? Is there a real reason or is it just that nobody asked
> > > > > for
> > > > > it, or nobody saw a need for it? Trying to figure if llvmpipe
> > > > > installed by default everywhere (on Linux) is something we can
> > > > > realistically hope for.
> > > > 
> > > > One thing to keep in mind for this is that llvmpipe currently
> > > > doesn't
> > > > work on PowerPC architectures
> > > 
> > > PowerPC is not a big concern for us.
> > > https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Supported_build_configurations
> > > 
> > > Besides x86 and x86-64, the other arch we care about is ARM (v7 and
> > > soon v6 too).
> > 
> > E.g. Debian ships your browser on powerpc and many more
> > architectures.
> 
> Well, each project does their own choice of which architectures to
> support;

Of course, and it looks like the approach you're suggesting in the bug
report you referenced should be fine. I just wanted to make sure you're
aware.


> Notice that WebGL renderers are only a drop in the bucket of what one
> has to do to support "the modern web" on a given architecture. For
> example, Mozilla is not currently supporting PPC in its JavaScript JIT
> compilers.

Yes, I'm painfully aware of that. :}

> If one wanted to support "the modern web" on PPC, supporting
> JavaScript JIT would be a much more important thing to do, before it
> would start making sense to focus on WebGL rendering.

FWIW, WebGL is basically working on PPC.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer           |                   http://www.amd.com
Libre software enthusiast         |          Debian, X and DRI developer