How does the Sample Implementation compare to Mesa?
We believe the Sample Implementation is strong in areas such as internal state management as well as complete feature coverage (such as the optional imaging features of the OpenGL 1.2 Specification, which Mesa does not provide). By comparision to the currently distributed SI, Mesa will probably provide better software rendering performance, and there are existing open-source hardware drivers projects based on Mesa. We think the two codebases can be complementary. Based on discussions with some of the active Mesa developers, there’s a reasonable chance of merging the two together into a single reference implementation and driver kit over time.
