[LLVMdev] LLVM as an OpenGL backend

[Tom Stellard]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 04:06:10PM +0000, Sam Kellett wrote:
> Would it be feasible to compile LLVM IR into shading language assembler? If
> so, is this already being done?
>

The R600 backend does this in conjunction with the Open Source mesa3D
project: http://www.mesa3d.org/

Mesa has a glsl frontend that is used to emit LLVM IR for newer AMD
GPUs, which is fed into the R600 backend to produce native GPU code.

Besides hardware accelerated drivers, the Mesa3d project also comes with a
software based rasterizer, which does the same thing, but instead of the
R600 backend it uses some of llvm's CPU backends.

-Tom
 
> This would provide the obvious benefits of not having to differentiate
> between GLSL and HLSL (et al.) and the pleasure of using some other
> language to write and test the shader's that have support as an LLVM
> frontend.
> 
> I've googled and found nothing about this. The only LLVM and OpenGL talk I
> can find it about Apple using it in Leopard but I don't think that's the
> same thing as this is it?
> 
> There may so much fundamentally wrong with my understanding of the LLVM
> stack that comes through by asking this question so I'm sorry in advance if
> that's the case!
> 
> Cheers,
> Sam

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