Update: Good news, it will be on video.
It seems Nvidia are getting more invested in Linux, and this makes me rather happy. At SIGGRAPH 2015 on Sunday Nvidia is doing a number of talks, and two are very interesting for us Linux folks.
Between 9-10AM (LA Time) Nvidia will be hosting a "Vulkan on NVIDIA GPUs" talk, and that's incredibly exciting. I now fully expect them to be the first ones out the door with Vulkan in their official drivers. I know Valve are doing experimental Intel drivers, but this is Nvidia doing it officially.
Then at 12:45 - 1:45 pm Nvidia will host another talk titled "The Time Has Come: Powerful Profiling and Debugging Tools Arrive for Linux and OpenGL With NVIDIA’s Linux Graphics Debugger".
It's fantastic to see Nvidia do talks like this, and hopefully they will be available on video somewhere afterwards. Otherwise we will be at the mercy of anyone able to attend, which is impossible for me with a young child right now, not to mention flying to LA + accommodation would be crazy price wise.
I hope to see Intel and AMD talk up Vulkan a bit more soon too.
This has been the single most exciting year in Linux Gaming history, remember it folks. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It seems Nvidia are getting more invested in Linux, and this makes me rather happy. At SIGGRAPH 2015 on Sunday Nvidia is doing a number of talks, and two are very interesting for us Linux folks.
Between 9-10AM (LA Time) Nvidia will be hosting a "Vulkan on NVIDIA GPUs" talk, and that's incredibly exciting. I now fully expect them to be the first ones out the door with Vulkan in their official drivers. I know Valve are doing experimental Intel drivers, but this is Nvidia doing it officially.
Then at 12:45 - 1:45 pm Nvidia will host another talk titled "The Time Has Come: Powerful Profiling and Debugging Tools Arrive for Linux and OpenGL With NVIDIA’s Linux Graphics Debugger".
It's fantastic to see Nvidia do talks like this, and hopefully they will be available on video somewhere afterwards. Otherwise we will be at the mercy of anyone able to attend, which is impossible for me with a young child right now, not to mention flying to LA + accommodation would be crazy price wise.
I hope to see Intel and AMD talk up Vulkan a bit more soon too.
This has been the single most exciting year in Linux Gaming history, remember it folks. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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This is very important. This tells that Vulkan spec is truly finished (otherwise they wouldn't talk about drivers), Nvidia has been for long time with Vulkan and Linux graphics debugger to make OpenGL games run faster - yes, please!
I expect AMD to talk about their Vulkan efforts too. With Mesa3D finally getting OpenGL 4 compatibility, this is truly exciting times. There's lot of things to be done but this is certainly signal moving forward.
I expect AMD to talk about their Vulkan efforts too. With Mesa3D finally getting OpenGL 4 compatibility, this is truly exciting times. There's lot of things to be done but this is certainly signal moving forward.
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I hope vulkan can and will support sli and multimontor setups.
At the moment linuxs is useless when it comes to sli and gaming with more then one montior.
Sadly.
At the moment linuxs is useless when it comes to sli and gaming with more then one montior.
Sadly.
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Does anyone know whether the talks will be publically available for everyone after they did it?
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I really hope they release Vulkan driver at SIGGRAPH or soon after. Go a vacation coming up and would love to code a small gfx demo using Vulkan..
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Cyba.Cowboy 7 Aug 2015
Between the enthusiasm for Linux-based operating systems shown by Nvidia, and the wide support for their products (graphics cards) by games compatible with Linux-based operating systems, I throw my full support behind the company... In the past, I never really gave too much though to the brand of graphics card used in a computer, but now? I won't buy a computer unless it has an Nvidia graphics card and actively avoid computers using AMD graphics cards...
My last few computers have used AMD graphics cards (high-end models, in some cases) and I was (obviously) not always opposed to AMD, but they seem only semi-interested in Linux-based operating systems (something that seems to be changing, albeit slowly...), their graphics cards almost always pale in comparison to the performance of equivalent products from Nvidia (under Linux-based operating systems) and support for AMD products in Linux games is appalling (how many titles have poor or no support for AMD graphics cards?).
Just my 2¢...
My last few computers have used AMD graphics cards (high-end models, in some cases) and I was (obviously) not always opposed to AMD, but they seem only semi-interested in Linux-based operating systems (something that seems to be changing, albeit slowly...), their graphics cards almost always pale in comparison to the performance of equivalent products from Nvidia (under Linux-based operating systems) and support for AMD products in Linux games is appalling (how many titles have poor or no support for AMD graphics cards?).
Just my 2¢...
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If Nvidia really are out the door first with Vulkan support (disregarding the Intel driver Valve made), I will be disappointed.
Not in the efforts of Nvidia, but in AMD's skill. Vulkan is their brainchild, since it spawned from Mantle. I really thought AMD would be on top of it this time. There's still time until what's announced, but I feel it in my gut that AMD probably isn't that interested in it as they are in DX12.
Not in the efforts of Nvidia, but in AMD's skill. Vulkan is their brainchild, since it spawned from Mantle. I really thought AMD would be on top of it this time. There's still time until what's announced, but I feel it in my gut that AMD probably isn't that interested in it as they are in DX12.
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Nice. It will still be some time until we see actual games taking full advantage of Vulkan, but the sooner the spec is finalized and the sooner there are drivers supporting it, the sooner we will see said games taking advantage of Vulkan.
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If Nvidia really are out the door first with Vulkan support (disregarding the Intel driver Valve made), I will be disappointed.
Not in the efforts of Nvidia, but in AMD's skill. Vulkan is their brainchild, since it spawned from Mantle. I really thought AMD would be on top of it this time. There's still time until what's announced, but I feel it in my gut that AMD probably isn't that interested in it as they are in DX12.
I'm not surprised.
That also happened in the past when AMD talked to support OpenCL rather than CUDA :
-nVidia was the very first graphics vendor in doing an OpenCL hardware accelerated implementation. Not AMD.
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I won't buy a computer unless it has an Nvidia graphics card and actively avoid computers using AMD graphics cards...
I would want to buy an AMD card, for FreeSync (vs. GSync) and Nvidias GTX 970 lies.
But obviously, as a Linux solely user(*), I won't.
(*) to the native speakers: is this correct, "Linux solely user"?
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I'm not surprised.
That also happened in the past when AMD talked to support OpenCL rather than CUDA :
-nVidia was the very first graphics vendor in doing an OpenCL hardware accelerated implementation. Not AMD.
I did not know that, that's seriously depressing but thank you for sharing that knowledge with me.
EDIT:
To be fair, nVidia typically releases early, often broken, versions where as AMD lets it cook a bit more internally. It happens with OpenGL versions too. There's a reason everyone was stuck with the horrible way of opening GL2.x context before they could open a GL3.x context.
First out the gate isn't always better.
That is true as well, first out the gate is not always better. However, it also shows a lack of dedication to not support a specification that they helped build from the ground up. If a competitor beats you on your own race track, somethings wrong. EDIT2! To clarify, I'm not saying AMD's beaten yet. It's just a sinking feeling when I see Intel and Nvidia with more to show for it than AMD seemingly does for now. Let's hope AMD surprises us all for the best!
Last edited by Sabun on 7 Aug 2015 at 10:57 am UTC
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I am getting impatient with Vulkan, I want to see it in Action and I have more than 1000 questions to ask about it :o
For Example:
1.As far as I know Vulkan needs new drivers from Nvidia to utilize Vulkan api , right?
2.So Dota 2 is using source 2 but since there are no drivers that support vulkan api it means that Dota2 is not utilizing Vulkan api, that goes for all platforms, right?
3. Game Engines are going to utilize Vulkan Api? So whatever games are already on Linux are going to get new builds with Vulkan Api support? So we can see Shadow of Mordor utilizing Vulkan Api?
4. How easy or hard to convert the current games to support Vulkan API?
meh... lots of things to ask , I better stop here :P
Last edited by wolfyrion on 7 Aug 2015 at 11:51 am UTC
For Example:
1.As far as I know Vulkan needs new drivers from Nvidia to utilize Vulkan api , right?
2.So Dota 2 is using source 2 but since there are no drivers that support vulkan api it means that Dota2 is not utilizing Vulkan api, that goes for all platforms, right?
3. Game Engines are going to utilize Vulkan Api? So whatever games are already on Linux are going to get new builds with Vulkan Api support? So we can see Shadow of Mordor utilizing Vulkan Api?
4. How easy or hard to convert the current games to support Vulkan API?
meh... lots of things to ask , I better stop here :P
Last edited by wolfyrion on 7 Aug 2015 at 11:51 am UTC
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pretty sure nvidia still don't have OpenCL 2.0 support either.
They don't even support OpenCL 1.2, released end of 2011.
It clearly highlights the proprietary character soaked in that company.
And it clearly shows that OpenCL (together with good driver support)
is a good API. Otherwise, they could just let the users decide between
CUDA and OpenCL - if CUDA is really the better "product".
But it's more or less the same - granted, with good library support - but
actually meant as a vendor lock-in.
And it worked out... unfortunately.
NVidia is NOT your friend if you care a bit of software and hardware freedom.
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4) It takes a bit of effort. New API, developer experience, and approach to the engine are all factors - the last in particular may make it simply not worthwhile. Newer games on newer engines are where the first appearances are likely to be.
I've got a question as well. As far as I understood, Vulkan and the new DirectX are lower level APIs than their predecessors, and so it will make way more work to implement something in Vulkan or DirectX 12 than in OpenGL or DirectX 11. Is this correct?
Last edited by Eike on 7 Aug 2015 at 12:19 pm UTC
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Perkeleen_Vittupää 7 Aug 2015
I suppose this has to do with December's big SteamOS release also. Vulkan takes Linux gaming to a whole new level (?)
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I am terribly excited about vulkan. I hope the support will be backed in mesa day one !
About nVidia's debugger, though, IMO they should have worked to improve a cross-vendor solution; that would have meant less work and good tools for everyone... But you know, when you can sell 10x more cards to developers than AMD, logic and ethics don't stand a chance against financials :/
I hope mesa devs will come up with a cross-vendor multi gpu solution for vulkan, though, unless it is exposed directly by the api ?
Last edited by MayeulC on 8 Aug 2015 at 11:19 am UTC
About nVidia's debugger, though, IMO they should have worked to improve a cross-vendor solution; that would have meant less work and good tools for everyone... But you know, when you can sell 10x more cards to developers than AMD, logic and ethics don't stand a chance against financials :/
I hope mesa devs will come up with a cross-vendor multi gpu solution for vulkan, though, unless it is exposed directly by the api ?
Last edited by MayeulC on 8 Aug 2015 at 11:19 am UTC
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I hope vulkan can and will support sli and multimontor setups.
At the moment linuxs is useless when it comes to sli and gaming with more then one montior.
Sadly.
no, it won't. sli/crossfire is obsoleted by both vulkan and directx12. with those you can control each and every gpu (even if they are from different vendor).
sli like feature in the game will be up to developer, not up to drivers
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I am getting impatient with Vulkan, I want to see it in Action and I have more than 1000 questions to ask about it :o
For Example:
1.As far as I know Vulkan needs new drivers from Nvidia to utilize Vulkan api , right?
2.So Dota 2 is using source 2 but since there are no drivers that support vulkan api it means that Dota2 is not utilizing Vulkan api, that goes for all platforms, right?
3. Game Engines are going to utilize Vulkan Api? So whatever games are already on Linux are going to get new builds with Vulkan Api support? So we can see Shadow of Mordor utilizing Vulkan Api?
4. How easy or hard to convert the current games to support Vulkan API?
meh... lots of things to ask , I better stop here :P
1. no, the hardware portion is more or less the same, vulkan is equivalent to libGL
2. if there are no drivers yet, how would it?
3. not every one. making vulkan into borderlands 2 which is on Unreal 3 would not make sense from financial point, especially since 3 won't ever get Vulkan support . only new engines will probably utilize it. somewhat like UE4 has --opengl4
4. if there is no public API yet... you expect guessing?
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4) It takes a bit of effort. New API, developer experience, and approach to the engine are all factors - the last in particular may make it simply not worthwhile. Newer games on newer engines are where the first appearances are likely to be.
I've got a question as well. As far as I understood, Vulkan and the new DirectX are lower level APIs than their predecessors, and so it will make way more work to implement something in Vulkan or DirectX 12 than in OpenGL or DirectX 11. Is this correct?
yes, and no. (don't know Vulkan, but i do a lot of low level programming)
writing something in pure low level would take enormously lot of work. but, when you do that you're not just writing low level whole time. you create methods to leverage and reuse that work, so it doesn't make much difference in the end. in fact, usual amount of debugging is much lower when you work with low level, since there were no complex blocks you wouldn't have access to
but, making app like game where performance matters will never be 100% of just making it. lot of that will go into profiling and optimizing. that is something that is so much harder if you can't optimize at low level. with high level you need to create workarounds.
one another thing that will be much simpler is threading, which is not really nice with older DirectX or OpenGL. both, DirectX12 and Vulkan have threading as part of their nature
Last edited by vulture on 7 Aug 2015 at 2:07 pm UTC
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I hope mesa devs will come up with a cross-vendor multi gpu solution for vulkan, though, unless it is exposed directly by the api ?
cross vendor multi gpu is part of Vulkan and direct access to gpu, no need for Mesa to do that
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Thanks everyone for this information. I have one more question : since DX12 is [very similar to Mantle](https://mobile.twitter.com/renderpipeline/status/581086347450007553), we can expect it to be very similar to vulkan, right ? Will it make a difference in the porting effort to vulkan ? Or is it something we don't know for sure yet?
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