Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) is an open sourced software framework for coordinating the following:
OS kernel
X Window System
3D graphics hardware
OpenGL-based client applications
DRI enables direct access to graphics hardware in the X Window System in a safe and efficient manner. DRI also enables OpenGL hardware-accelerated, 3D rendering on UNIX-like operating systems. DRI framework and the accelerated driver for Intel have been ported to Solaris. Currently, DRI has the graphics chipsets produced by Intel, ATI, Via, and 3dfx.