| 1 | Project History
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| 2 | ===============
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| 3 |
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| 4 | The Mesa project was originally started by Brian Paul. Here's a short
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| 5 | history of the project.
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| 6 |
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| 7 | August, 1993: I begin working on Mesa in my spare time. The project has
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| 8 | no name at that point. I was simply interested in writing a simple 3D
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| 9 | graphics library that used the then-new OpenGL API. I was partially
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| 10 | inspired by the *VOGL* library which emulated a subset of IRIS GL. I had
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| 11 | been programming with IRIS GL since 1991.
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| 12 |
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| 13 | November 1994: I contact SGI to ask permission to distribute my
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| 14 | OpenGL-like graphics library on the internet. SGI was generally
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| 15 | receptive to the idea and after negotiations with SGI's legal
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| 16 | department, I get permission to release it.
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| 17 |
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| 18 | February 1995: Mesa 1.0 is released on the internet. I expected that a
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| 19 | few people would be interested in it, but not thousands. I was soon
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| 20 | receiving patches, new features and thank-you notes on a daily basis.
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| 21 | That encouraged me to continue working on Mesa. The name Mesa just
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| 22 | popped into my head one day. SGI had asked me not to use the terms
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| 23 | *"Open"* or *"GL"* in the project name and I didn't want to make up a
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| 24 | new acronym. Later, I heard of the Mesa programming language and the
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| 25 | Mesa spreadsheet for NeXTStep.
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| 26 |
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| 27 | In the early days, OpenGL wasn't available on too many systems. It even
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| 28 | took a while for SGI to support it across their product line. Mesa
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| 29 | filled a big hole during that time. For a lot of people, Mesa was their
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| 30 | first introduction to OpenGL. I think SGI recognized that Mesa actually
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| 31 | helped to promote the OpenGL API, so they didn't feel threatened by the
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| 32 | project.
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| 33 |
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| 34 | 1995-1996: I continue working on Mesa both during my spare time and
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| 35 | during my work hours at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the
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| 36 | University of Wisconsin in Madison. My supervisor, Bill Hibbard, lets me
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| 37 | do this because Mesa is now being using for the
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| 38 | `Vis5D <https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html>`__ project.
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| 39 |
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| 40 | October 1996: Mesa 2.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL 1.1
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| 41 | specification.
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| 42 |
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| 43 | March 1997: Mesa 2.2 is released. It supports the new 3dfx Voodoo
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| 44 | graphics card via the Glide library. It's the first really popular
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| 45 | hardware OpenGL implementation for Linux.
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| 46 |
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| 47 | September 1998: Mesa 3.0 is released. It's the first publicly-available
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| 48 | implementation of the OpenGL 1.2 API.
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| 49 |
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| 50 | March 1999: I attend my first OpenGL ARB meeting. I contribute to the
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| 51 | development of several official OpenGL extensions over the years.
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| 52 |
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| 53 | September 1999: I'm hired by Precision Insight, Inc. Mesa is a key
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| 54 | component of 3D hardware acceleration in the new DRI project for
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| 55 | XFree86. Drivers for 3dfx, 3dLabs, Intel, Matrox and ATI hardware soon
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| 56 | follow.
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| 57 |
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| 58 | October 2001: Mesa 4.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL 1.3
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| 59 | specification.
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| 60 |
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| 61 | November 2001: I cofounded Tungsten Graphics, Inc. with Keith Whitwell,
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| 62 | Jens Owen, David Dawes and Frank LaMonica. Tungsten Graphics was
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| 63 | acquired by VMware in December 2008.
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| 64 |
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| 65 | November 2002: Mesa 5.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL 1.4
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| 66 | specification.
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| 67 |
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| 68 | January 2003: Mesa 6.0 is released. It implements the OpenGL 1.5
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| 69 | specification as well as the :ext:`GL_ARB_vertex_program` and
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| 70 | :ext:`GL_ARB_fragment_program` extensions.
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| 71 |
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| 72 | June 2007: Mesa 7.0 is released, implementing the OpenGL 2.1
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| 73 | specification and OpenGL Shading Language.
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| 74 |
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| 75 | 2008: Keith Whitwell and other Tungsten Graphics employees develop
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| 76 | `Gallium <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium3D>`__ - a new GPU
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| 77 | abstraction layer. The latest Mesa drivers are based on Gallium and
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| 78 | other APIs such as OpenVG are implemented on top of Gallium.
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| 79 |
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| 80 | February 2012: Mesa 8.0 is released, implementing the OpenGL 3.0
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| 81 | specification and version 1.30 of the OpenGL Shading Language.
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| 82 |
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| 83 | July 2016: Mesa 12.0 is released, including OpenGL 4.3 support and
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| 84 | initial support for Vulkan for Intel GPUs. Plus, there's another Gallium
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| 85 | software driver ("OpenSWR") based on LLVM and developed by Intel.
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| 86 |
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| 87 | Ongoing: Mesa is the OpenGL implementation for devices designed by
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| 88 | Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Vivante, plus the VMware and
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| 89 | VirGL virtual GPUs. There's also several software-based renderers:
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| 90 | Softpipe (a Gallium reference driver) and LLVMpipe (LLVM/JIT-based
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| 91 | high-speed rasterizer).
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| 92 |
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| 93 | Work continues on the drivers and core Mesa to implement newer versions
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| 94 | of the OpenGL, OpenGL ES and Vulkan specifications.
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