AI Finishes Off AVX-512 Support in Mesa's LLVMpipe Software Driver

Mesa's LLVMpipe software OpenGL driver could soon run faster on modern CPUs that support AVX-512 instructions. A draft merge request opened today adds 512-bit wide vector support for fragment shaders to this entirely CPU-based Gallium3D driver.

The idea isn't new. Red Hat engineer David Airlie had tinkered with AVX-512 for LLVMpipe years ago but never finished it. The work was only completed over the past few days — and, by his own account, with a helping hand from AI: the GPT Terra and Astra models were put to use.

In a blog post, Airlie explains that the AI helped close the final gaps in the code and flagged a few bugs along the way. In other words, this isn't a driver generated from scratch, but a long-stalled effort nudged into a reviewable state.

There is one notable caveat, however. Airlie himself has no AVX-512 hardware, so he hasn't actually been able to test the implementation. Whether the AI-assisted code is truly in order will only become clear once someone runs it on suitable silicon — until then it remains a draft with an open question hanging over it.

Those interested can review the work, and join the discussion, in the merge request itself.

Source: Phoronix