RADV Vulkan Driver Picks Up 16-Bit Storage Support

Another Vulkan extension that Mesa RADV developers can cross off their TODO list is VK_KHR_16bit_storage.

VK_KHR_16bit_storage is the extension for supporting 16-bit types within shader input and output interfaces as well as push constant blocks. Intel's ANV driver had already been plumbing the 16-bit storage support into their driver while now the RADV driver is exposing the extension too.

Over the course of several commits today, the RADV 16-bit storage support was merged and then flipped on. RADV's VK_KHR_16bit_storage support is contingent on being compiled against the AMDGPU LLVM 7.0 back-end. Additionally, this 16-bit support will only work with AMD Volcanic Islands (GCN 1.2) GPUs and newer.

This latest extension for the open-source Mesa-based Radeon Vulkan driver is landing just in time for appearing in next month's Mesa 18.2 feature release.