1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
4 <meta http-equiv=
"content-type" content=
"text/html; charset=utf-8">
5 <title>Mesa Introduction
</title>
6 <link rel=
"stylesheet" type=
"text/css" href=
"mesa.css">
13 Mesa is an open-source implementation of the
14 <a href=
"http://www.opengl.org/" target=
"_parent">OpenGL
</a> specification -
15 a system for rendering interactive
3D graphics.
19 A variety of device drivers allows Mesa to be used in many different
20 environments ranging from software emulation to complete hardware acceleration
25 Mesa ties into several other open-source projects: the
26 <a href=
"http://dri.freedesktop.org/" target=
"_parent">Direct Rendering
27 Infrastructure
</a> and
<a href=
"http://x.org" target=
"_parent">X.org
</a> to
28 provide OpenGL support to users of X on Linux, FreeBSD and other operating
34 <h1>Project History
</h1>
37 The Mesa project was originally started by Brian Paul.
38 Here's a short history of the project.
42 August,
1993: I begin working on Mesa in my spare time. The project
43 has no name at that point. I was simply interested in writing a simple
44 3D graphics library that used the then-new OpenGL API. I was partially
45 inspired by the
<em>VOGL
</em> library which emulated a subset of IRIS GL.
46 I had been programming with IRIS GL since
1991.
50 November
1994: I contact SGI to ask permission to distribute my OpenGL-like
51 graphics library on the internet. SGI was generally receptive to the
52 idea and after negotiations with SGI's legal department, I get permission
57 February
1995: Mesa
1.0 is released on the internet. I expected that
58 a few people would be interested in it, but not thousands.
59 I was soon receiving patches, new features and thank-you notes on a
60 daily basis. That encouraged me to continue working on Mesa. The
61 name Mesa just popped into my head one day. SGI had asked me not to use
62 the terms
<em>"Open"</em> or
<em>"GL"</em> in the project name and I didn't
63 want to make up a new acronym. Later, I heard of the Mesa programming
64 language and the Mesa spreadsheet for NeXTStep.
68 In the early days, OpenGL wasn't available on too many systems.
69 It even took a while for SGI to support it across their product line.
70 Mesa filled a big hole during that time.
71 For a lot of people, Mesa was their first introduction to OpenGL.
72 I think SGI recognized that Mesa actually helped to promote
73 the OpenGL API, so they didn't feel threatened by the project.
78 1995-
1996: I continue working on Mesa both during my spare time and during
79 my work hours at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University
80 of Wisconsin in Madison. My supervisor, Bill Hibbard, lets me do this because
81 Mesa is now being using for the
<a href=
"http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/%7Ebillh/vis.html" target=
"_parent">Vis5D
</a> project.
83 October
1996: Mesa
2.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL
1.1 specification.
87 March
1997: Mesa
2.2 is released. It supports the new
3dfx Voodoo graphics
88 card via the Glide library. It's the first really popular hardware OpenGL
89 implementation for Linux.
93 September
1998: Mesa
3.0 is released. It's the first publicly-available
94 implementation of the OpenGL
1.2 API.
98 March
1999: I attend my first OpenGL ARB meeting. I contribute to the
99 development of several official OpenGL extensions over the years.
103 September
1999: I'm hired by Precision Insight, Inc. Mesa is a key
104 component of
3D hardware acceleration in the new DRI project for XFree86.
105 Drivers for
3dfx,
3dLabs, Intel, Matrox and ATI hardware soon follow.
109 October
2001: Mesa
4.0 is released.
110 It implements the OpenGL
1.3 specification.
115 November
2001: I cofounded Tungsten Graphics, Inc. with Keith Whitwell,
116 Jens Owen, David Dawes and Frank LaMonica.
117 Tungsten Graphics was acquired by VMware in December
2008.
121 November
2002: Mesa
5.0 is released.
122 It implements the OpenGL
1.4 specification.
126 January
2003: Mesa
6.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL
1.5
127 specification as well as the GL_ARB_vertex_program and
128 GL_ARB_fragment_program extensions.
132 June
2007: Mesa
7.0 is released, implementing the OpenGL
2.1 specification
133 and OpenGL Shading Language.
137 2008: Keith Whitwell and other Tungsten Graphics employees develop
138 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium3D" target=
"_parent">Gallium
</a>
139 - a new GPU abstraction layer. The latest Mesa drivers are based on
140 Gallium and other APIs such as OpenVG are implemented on top of Gallium.
144 February
2012: Mesa
8.0 is released, implementing the OpenGL
3.0 specification
145 and version
1.30 of the OpenGL Shading Language.
149 Ongoing: Mesa is the OpenGL implementation for several types of hardware
150 made by Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, plus the VMware virtual GPU.
151 There's also several software-based renderers: swrast (the legacy
152 Mesa rasterizer), softpipe (a gallium reference driver) and llvmpipe
153 (LLVM/JIT-based high-speed rasterizer).
154 Work continues on the drivers and core Mesa to implement newer versions
155 of the OpenGL specification.
160 <h1>Major Versions
</h1>
163 This is a summary of the major versions of Mesa.
164 Mesa's major version number has been incremented whenever a new version
165 of the OpenGL specification is implemented.
169 <h2>Version
8.x features
</h2>
171 Version
8.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
3.0 API.
172 The developers at Intel deserve a lot of credit for implementing most
173 of the OpenGL
3.0 features in core Mesa, the GLSL compiler as well as
178 <h2>Version
7.x features
</h2>
180 Version
7.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
2.1 API. The main feature
181 of OpenGL
2.x is the OpenGL Shading Language.
185 <h2>Version
6.x features
</h2>
187 Version
6.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
1.5 API with the following
188 extensions incorporated as standard features:
191 <li>GL_ARB_occlusion_query
192 <li>GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
193 <li>GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
196 Also note that several OpenGL tokens were renamed in OpenGL
1.5
197 for the sake of consistency.
198 The old tokens are still available.
202 ------------------------------------------------------------
203 GL_FOG_COORD_SRC GL_FOG_COORDINATE_SOURCE
204 GL_FOG_COORD GL_FOG_COORDINATE
205 GL_CURRENT_FOG_COORD GL_CURRENT_FOG_COORDINATE
206 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_TYPE GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_TYPE
207 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_STRIDE GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_STRIDE
208 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY_POINTER GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY_POINTER
209 GL_FOG_COORD_ARRAY GL_FOG_COORDINATE_ARRAY
210 GL_SRC0_RGB GL_SOURCE0_RGB
211 GL_SRC1_RGB GL_SOURCE1_RGB
212 GL_SRC2_RGB GL_SOURCE2_RGB
213 GL_SRC0_ALPHA GL_SOURCE0_ALPHA
214 GL_SRC1_ALPHA GL_SOURCE1_ALPHA
215 GL_SRC2_ALPHA GL_SOURCE2_ALPHA
219 <a href=
"http://www.opengl.org/documentation/spec.html" target=
"_parent">
220 OpenGL specification
</a> for more details.
225 <h2>Version
5.x features
</h2>
227 Version
5.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
1.4 API with the following
228 extensions incorporated as standard features:
231 <li>GL_ARB_depth_texture
233 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
234 <li>GL_ARB_texture_mirror_repeat
235 <li>GL_ARB_window_pos
236 <li>GL_EXT_blend_color
237 <li>GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
238 <li>GL_EXT_blend_logic_op
239 <li>GL_EXT_blend_minmax
240 <li>GL_EXT_blend_subtract
242 <li>GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
243 <li>GL_EXT_point_parameters
244 <li>GL_EXT_secondary_color
245 <li>GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
246 <li>GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias (plus, a per-texture LOD bias parameter)
247 <li>GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
251 <h2>Version
4.x features
</h2>
254 Version
4.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
1.3 API with the following
255 extensions incorporated as standard features:
259 <li>GL_ARB_multisample
260 <li>GL_ARB_multitexture
261 <li>GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
262 <li>GL_ARB_texture_compression
263 <li>GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
264 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_add
265 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
266 <li>GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
267 <li>GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
270 <h2>Version
3.x features
</h2>
273 Version
3.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
1.2 API with the following
277 <li>BGR, BGRA and packed pixel formats
278 <li>New texture border clamp mode
279 <li>glDrawRangeElements()
280 <li>standard
3-D texturing
281 <li>advanced MIPMAP control
282 <li>separate specular color interpolation
286 <h2>Version
2.x features
</h2>
288 Version
2.x of Mesa implements the OpenGL
1.1 API with the following
294 <li>glAreTexturesResident
298 <li>glCopyTexSubImage1D
299 <li>glCopyTexSubImage2D
303 <li>glPrioritizeTextures
312 <li>glEdgeFlagPointer
314 <li>glInterleavedArrays
316 <li>glTexCoordPointer
319 <li>Client state management:
321 <li>glDisableClientState
322 <li>glEnableClientState
323 <li>glPopClientAttrib
324 <li>glPushClientAttrib