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Valve have been extremely busy, and we are already seeing some fruits of their work. They have written a Vulkan driver for an Intel GPU, showed Source 2 with Dota 2 on it, and they will open source the driver.

It’s fantastic that Source 2 is getting in on the action so early! They even have a video of it running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hth4u65zfc
Thanks to PC Perspective for the video

You can see a slide below outlining a few interesting points:
image

Major thanks to SteamDB for being there and for their live blogging.

I really, badly, hope that Nvidia, AMD and Intel buckle down and get on it. It isn’t just Steam Machines and SteamOS that will push us to succeed, as we need this Vulkan API to bring the performance we have been lacking often.

There is also this video of a debugger called GLAVE developed by Valve and LunarG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miZmas6sGqM

It’s worth noting that the Vulkan API has not yet been finalised, and we imagine we will hear more and more about it as the year goes on.

Vulkan here we come! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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18 comments

minj Mar 5, 2015
You can see a slide below outlining a few interesting points:
no, we can't
Liam Dawe Mar 5, 2015
You can see a slide below outlining a few interesting points:
no, we can't
All aboard the Liam failed train, choochoo, it's up now.
miro Mar 5, 2015
choo chhooo!




Yea, valve can take all my money + all my deposits and savings in the bank!
sarmad Mar 5, 2015
The slide says "Vulcan supported ACROSS THE BOARD on Steam Machines". I assume this means both AMD and nVidia have Vulcan drivers for Linux in development.
linux_gamer Mar 5, 2015

Yea, valve can take all my money + all my deposits and savings in the bank!
I have already feared that some guys from this site go nuts back on Tuesday!

]It’s fantastic that Source 2 is getting in on the action so early!
Valve doesn't only make promise after promise, they are really working hard and delivering high performance.
Segata Sanshiro Mar 5, 2015
All the Vulkan stuff has been the best news to come out of GDC really. If they can get this out soon (before DirectX), redudce driver overhead and make it easier for developers then it's fantastic news for us.

Btw, does anyone know if this will work on PS4 instead of OpenGL or not? That's going to be a pretty big factor in its adoption.
mrdeathjr Mar 5, 2015
All the Vulkan stuff has been the best news to come out of GDC really. If they can get this out soon (before DirectX), redudce driver overhead and make it easier for developers then it's fantastic news for us.

Btw, does anyone know if this will work on PS4 instead of OpenGL or not? That's going to be a pretty big factor in its adoption.

PS4 dont use OpenGL, them use own lenguage pssl (PlayStation Shading Language)

Maybe this document expain more about that (around 50 pages)

PSSL PDF

^_^
r2rX Mar 5, 2015
My plums are tingling. :) Guys, we're just gonna keep getting more and more epic news as the year rolls by.

Btw, does anyone know if this will work on PS4 instead of OpenGL or not? That's going to be a pretty big factor in its adoption.

AFAIK, Sony's API implementation is low-level as well....so i'm unsure if Vulkan will help them very much.
Segata Sanshiro Mar 5, 2015
I always thought they used a slightly modified version of OpenGL and a slightly modified BSD as the OS... Maybe I'm thinking of the PS3 or maybe I just made that up completely. Whoops!
r2rX Mar 5, 2015
I always thought they used a slightly modified version of OpenGL and a slightly modified BSD as the OS... Maybe I'm thinking of the PS3 or maybe I just made that up completely. Whoops!

You're just about right. Both the PS3 and PS4 are based of modified versions of FreeBSD. The PS4 features two graphics APIs; a low-level API called GNM and a high level API called GNMX. (Sony also uses their own PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL), specifically introduced with the PS4).

The PS3 uses PSGL (which is a mix of OpenGL ES and NVIDIA's CG).
blackout24 Mar 6, 2015
The slide says "Vulcan supported ACROSS THE BOARD on Steam Machines". I assume this means both AMD and nVidia have Vulcan drivers for Linux in development.

They demoed NVIDIA drivers during the talk and the later Vulkan sessions on Windows. Since the only thing different between NVIDIA drivers across platforms is a small shim to abstract the OS it would probably work in a few weeks. The Imagination Technology guys (two of them) wrote their Vulkan driver for PowerVR in just two months.
sarmad Mar 6, 2015
The slide says "Vulcan supported ACROSS THE BOARD on Steam Machines". I assume this means both AMD and nVidia have Vulcan drivers for Linux in development.

They demoed NVIDIA drivers during the talk and the later Vulkan sessions on Windows. Since the only thing different between NVIDIA drivers across platforms is a small shim to abstract the OS it would probably work in a few weeks. The Imagination Technology guys (two of them) wrote their Vulkan driver for PowerVR in just two months.

Awesome news. Yeah, I expect Vulcan to be much easier to implement than OpenGL since it's a simplified API.
SXX Mar 6, 2015
You're just about right. Both the PS3 and PS4 are based of modified versions of FreeBSD.
As PS4 not yet hacked I have no idea about it, but PS3 have far more things from NetBSD rather than FreeBSD. Though it's not like real OS as there is very few libraries available and it's not use things like X server, audio servers, etc.

The PS4 features two graphics APIs; a low-level API called GNM and a high level API called GNMX. (Sony also uses their own PlayStation Shader Language (PSSL), specifically introduced with the PS4).
It's also have OpenGL ES 2 support: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#opengles
Though very likely that it's implemented on top of other API.

The PS3 uses PSGL (which is a mix of OpenGL ES and NVIDIA's CG).
Nope. Just like PS4 it's mainly used is proprietary api called GCM and PSGL is implemented on top of it. Of course PSGL is extremely crippled (OpenGL ES 1.0) and was never used for anything except few casual games.
STiAT Mar 6, 2015
The slide says "Vulcan supported ACROSS THE BOARD on Steam Machines". I assume this means both AMD and nVidia have Vulcan drivers for Linux in development.

They demoed NVIDIA drivers during the talk and the later Vulkan sessions on Windows. Since the only thing different between NVIDIA drivers across platforms is a small shim to abstract the OS it would probably work in a few weeks. The Imagination Technology guys (two of them) wrote their Vulkan driver for PowerVR in just two months.

Both, NVidia and ATI told like half a year ago that they're implementing the Vulkan-API (back then OGL-Next) while it's designed in their drivers already. NVidia even went a step further, saying that they'll have a "day-1" release as soon as the API is stable for "all supported platforms", which I'd guess includes Linux.
r2rX Mar 6, 2015
As PS4 not yet hacked I have no idea about it, but PS3 have far more things from NetBSD rather than FreeBSD. Though it's not like real OS as there is very few libraries available and it's not use things like X server, audio servers, etc.

From what i've read, PS3 runs on a mix of FreeBSD and NetBSD....not sure which it relies on more than the other. Concerning PS4, its OrbisOS is mainly based of a modified FreeBSD 9.

Just like PS4 it's mainly used is proprietary api called GCM and PSGL is implemented on top of it. Of course PSGL is extremely crippled (OpenGL ES 1.0) and was never used for anything except few casual games.

Thanks for the correction. :) The PSSL is solely on PS4, though.

Since the PS4 hasn't been hacked yet, we don't know all it's inner workings. The following link does shed some light on some of the open-source software it uses:

http://www.scei.co.jp/ps4-license/
Kristian Mar 6, 2015
There is a difference between PSGL and PSSL. One is an API, the other a shading language.
unclemike Mar 6, 2015
I watched the video of GDC presentation of Vulkan and SPIR-V. Apparently AMD contibuted the Mantle code base as a foundation for the Vulkan API, and the lead developer of Vulkan is the previous AMD developer of Mantle, so they have contributed quite a lot already to the project. They have been credited as the main reason progress has been so swift.

What's interesting to me is that the whole industry - minus certain corporations - are really getting behind a next generation open source graphics technology and that will really help turn the microsoft monopoly into a walled garden instead and free up developers to ignore dxd
Polochamps Mar 6, 2015
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