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Dave Airlie has been working on an open source AMD Vulkan driver and he's ready to show it off a little bit.
I do love the fact that some people go and code something like this when they're bored and need a distraction:
While some people on certain cards can use the AMDGPU-PRO driver to get Vulkan, that's also quite limited for the cards it supports and not fully open. As for the open source AMD driver, it doesn't currently support Vulkan at all.
It's very early and not close to being a full driver yet as he says himself:
It also has very limited support right now, but that will change as it progresses:
You can find the driver sources on github here. You can also see his full post on his blog here.
What will be interesting to see is if this could eventually be picked up by Mesa and merged into it. Everything starts from somewhere and having open source Vulkan for AMD users could be pretty sweet. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I do love the fact that some people go and code something like this when they're bored and need a distraction:
QuoteI was waiting for an open source driver to appear when I realised I should really just write one myself, some talking with Bas later, and we decided to see where we could get.
While some people on certain cards can use the AMDGPU-PRO driver to get Vulkan, that's also quite limited for the cards it supports and not fully open. As for the open source AMD driver, it doesn't currently support Vulkan at all.
It's very early and not close to being a full driver yet as he says himself:
QuoteThis is the point at which we were willing to show it to others, it's not really a vulkan driver yet, so far it's a vulkan triangle demos driver.
It also has very limited support right now, but that will change as it progresses:
QuoteSo far it's only been run on Tonga and Fiji chips I think, we are hoping to support radeon kernel driver for SI/CIK at some point, but I think we need to get things a bit further on VI chips first.
You can find the driver sources on github here. You can also see his full post on his blog here.
What will be interesting to see is if this could eventually be picked up by Mesa and merged into it. Everything starts from somewhere and having open source Vulkan for AMD users could be pretty sweet. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I can't imagine how many "articles" Phoronix will squeeze from that single blog post... :P
Last edited by ziabice on 23 July 2016 at 11:06 am UTC
Last edited by ziabice on 23 July 2016 at 11:06 am UTC
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Quoting: ziabiceI can't imagine how many "articles" Phoronix will squeeze from that single blog post... :PTruth be told I sat on this for a few days, didn't even realize Phoronix had already covered it :(, genuinely thought he had missed it, doh! That'll teach me eh.
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Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: ziabiceI can't imagine how many "articles" Phoronix will squeeze from that single blog post... :PTruth be told I sat on this for a few days, didn't even realize Phoronix had already covered it :(, genuinely thought he had missed it, doh! That'll teach me eh.
LOL I missed it too! :D
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Quoting: swickWas that some poor attempt at a diss? Did I seriously just get called an nvidia fanboy lmao what?Quotethe AMDGPU-PRO driver to get Vulkan, that's also quite limited
topkek, get a grip nvidia fanboy
Limited as in the amount of cards it supports currently.
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ElectricPrism Jul 23, 2016
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: swickWas that some poor attempt at a diss? Did I seriously just get called an nvidia fanboy lmao what?Quotethe AMDGPU-PRO driver to get Vulkan, that's also quite limited
topkek, get a grip nvidia fanboy
Limited as in the amount of cards it supports currently.
I'll be switching over to the Red Team this year when more RX 480s come back in stock, It's been a nice run with Nvidia but I can't turn down the open driver.
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TheRiddick Jul 23, 2016
The AMDGPU-PRO driver is also limited in the type of WindowManager it works on (not all work), AND games that run with it ('most' Feral game ports don't work off the bat). Both issues are solvable but I don't know if AMD is paying attention to them (they certainly know about these issues).
Last edited by TheRiddick on 23 July 2016 at 9:17 pm UTC
Last edited by TheRiddick on 23 July 2016 at 9:17 pm UTC
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TheRiddick Jul 23, 2016
Its a problem with the OpenGL version String defined by AMD's drivers. You CAN fix it yourself, I had a couple of driver 'so' file patches for the 16.20 driver but have given up on using AMDGPU-PRO due to other issues.
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boltronics Jul 24, 2016
I haven't noticed any issues here with AMDGPU-Pro, but I'm mostly using the AMDGPU-Mesa stack from git. The only game in my collection which I need AMDGPU-Pro for is Dying Light. AMDGPU-Pro is also nice for testing DirectX 10 and 11 games with Wine, since Wine is making use of those newer extensions to support such DirectX API calls. However it should be noted that only a handful of DirectX 10/11 games have just started working in recent weeks, and I expect the AMDGPU/Mesa stack will achieve OpenGL 4.5 support well before Wine is ready for use with most DirectX 11 titles.
So in practise, AMDGPU-Pro isn't too useful by this point for post people that know how to compile Mesa. I also have no interest in keeping an AMDGPU-Pro installation around just for Vulkan, and will happily wait until the free software stack is in good shape. There are no Vulkan-only games around right now, and it should be some time before they make an appearance.
So in practise, AMDGPU-Pro isn't too useful by this point for post people that know how to compile Mesa. I also have no interest in keeping an AMDGPU-Pro installation around just for Vulkan, and will happily wait until the free software stack is in good shape. There are no Vulkan-only games around right now, and it should be some time before they make an appearance.
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AMD's lack of updates during the Catalyst driver drove me insane, especially when using newer distros. Everytime xserver got updated it broke my system. Never ever had that issue with Mesa drivers. I really wanted to test Vulkan out, but they haven't brought support to my GPU in Linux yet anyway. So I will wait for this open Vulkan driver and see how things progress.
But I need to make a choice in 6 months time. Does my new computer stay team red with improving open source drivers, or do I go to the dark side and get a GTX 1070.
But I need to make a choice in 6 months time. Does my new computer stay team red with improving open source drivers, or do I go to the dark side and get a GTX 1070.
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