AMD's Vulkan Linux Driver - Closed-Source at First

[HKZeroFive]

This was the first time we've heard AMD's Linux team talk about Vulkan... They are working on a Vulkan Linux driver and have one prototyped, but initially it will be closed-source and the open-sourced later... They also mention that OpenCL support will initially be closed up and then opened later. They already have some basic OpenCL open-source support via the Clover Gallium3D driver, but I imagine they're referring to OpenCL 2.1+ support with SPIR-V alongside Vulkan or the OpenCL Catalyst code.

Their Vulkan driver is in user-space communicating with libdrm that in turn is interfacing with the AMDGPU kernel driver. The slides don't mention whether they intend to support Vulkan with the current Radeon DRM driver for HD 7000 through Rx 300 (non-Tonga/Carrizo/Fiji) GPUs but only reference the AMDGPU kernel driver just for the very newest AMD GPUs like the R9 Fury and Carrizo APUs.

In the future they intend to focus more on open-source than closed-source. Closed-source is still relied on for workstation features, OpenGL 4.5, and OpenCL.Basic support for their closed-source (Catalyst) OpenGL and OpenCL support riding atop the rest of the AMDGPU driver stack is complete. Their initial Vulkan driver is using DRI3.

As long as it remains closed-source only in the beginning, I'm fine with it. I'm sure the AMD Linux team is doing well, and I'm excited on what they will deliver for Vulkan on Linux.

Sauce: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-gpu-xdc15&num=1

[Sauron]

Al long as it becomes open asap, then fair enough

[Muz]

Can someone explain how Vulkan is better than Dx12 or Dx11? Never bothered researching it and it seems interesting atleast.

 

EDIT: Don't worry, watched the Fast as Possible video.

[Albatross]

I just want...now.

[Master Disaster]

AMD have genuinely atrocious Nix support across the board, they really need to open source asap, if only to catch up with Nvidia.

[dalekphalm]

Can someone explain how Vulkan is better than Dx12 or Dx11? Never bothered researching it and it seems interesting atleast.

 

EDIT: Don't worry, watched the Fast as Possible video.

Better than DX12? Well - it's not. At least, we have no indication yet which is better.

 

In one regard, you could say that Vulkan is "Better" because it is cross-platform, whereas DX12 is Windows Kernel only - but aside from that, both are too knew for us to definitely say one is better than the other.

 

As for why Vulkan is better than DX11? Exactly the same reason why DX12 is better than DX11.

 

DX12 and Vulkan are both advanced, low level API's - they have much closer control over the hardware, with reduced driver overhead, and both support advanced GPU technologies, such as Asynchronous Compute.

 

DX11 is supposedly easier to develop for though, since, in theory, you may need to do more tweaking in DX12/Vulkan to get the most out of it.

[Misanthrope]

[tinfoil]Actually I don't think it's a coincidence that they know Nvidia has apparently no proper async compute support on DX12 so obviously they wouldn't want to just let em know the source code indirectly just yet and probably want to milk that DX12 advantage for as long as possible [/tinfoil]

[dalekphalm]

[tinfoil]Actually I don't think it's a coincidence that they know Nvidia has apparently no proper async compute support on DX12 so obviously they wouldn't want to just let em know the source code indirectly just yet and probably want to milk that DX12 advantage for as long as possible [/tinfoil]

For other aspects of DX12, I could 100% believe it. However Async Compute is a hardware limitation on NVIDIA architecture - the way they implemented their queuing and compute engines just don't favour Async Compute well at all.

 

However, I'm certain that NVIDIA has Async Compute support coming in Pascal or Volta.

 

They may be able to tweak their DX12 drivers though to squeeze out more performance.

[Curufinwe_wins]

For other aspects of DX12, I could 100% believe it. However Async Compute is a hardware limitation on NVIDIA architecture - the way they implemented their queuing and compute engines just don't favour Async Compute well at all.

However, I'm certain that NVIDIA has Async Compute support coming in Pascal or Volta.

They may be able to tweak their DX12 drivers though to squeeze out more performance.

Yea it just looked like they were better off disabling it on Maxwell chips. Which is totat ok as long as overall performance doesn't suffer relative to competition.

It will be interesting to see what happens on launch day of the first few dx12 games. I mean we kinda accept weeks of improvements per game now with dx11 but I'm sure being the first both amd and nvidia will be throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at it. The haters will be out in full swing.

[DaRk0]

Okay then I guess. Not that it matters much, since Linux market share is laughable amongst gamers.