Intel Vulkan Driver Split Happens - "HASVK" Introduced For Older Gen7/Gen8 Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Vulkan Driver Split Happens - "HASVK" Introduced For Older Gen7/Gen8 Graphics

The recently proposed Intel open-source Vulkan driver split where the Gen7/Gen8 graphics support would be shifted off to a separate "new" legacy driver has happened to allow the Intel ANV Vulkan driver to move forward with its Skylake "Gen9" graphics and later focus...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-ANV-HASVK-Split-Merged

[user1]

I'm wondering if a similar split will happen to RadeonSi and Radv at some point. If it will happen, then is it going to be because of too large difference in hardware between oldest and newest generations, or simply because it will require too much man power to maintain the same driver for all the generations, from GCN 1 all the way to the latest RDNA?

[Mahboi]

I thought I was a hasbeen, but actually I'm a hasvk.

[schmidtbag]

I'm wondering if a similar split will happen to RadeonSi and Radv at some point. If it will happen, then is it going to be because of too large difference in hardware between oldest and newest generations, or simply because it will require too much man power to maintain the same driver for all the generations, from GCN 1 all the way to the latest RDNA?

I'm honestly a little surprised they didn't make a new "radeonRDNA" driver. That would have been a clean breaking point, if they were going to take one. But, if there are enough similarities then maybe it's easier to have a single driver to maintain.

[Danny3]

Isn't this some kind of "Planned obsolescence"?
I bet that this branch for older GPUs will be left without any new Vulkan features and extensions.
They could've waited at least for the next stable Mesa version release.

[uxmkt]

I thought I was a hasbeen, but actually I'm a hasvk.

Well, sþlit happens.

[zboszor]

Isn't this some kind of "Planned obsolescence"?

It isn't. It would have been, if Gen7/8 support was simply removed. But it wasn't, the current state was split out of ANV as is into a new driver.

I bet that this branch for older GPUs will be left without any new Vulkan features and extensions.

It's not a branch, it's the same ANV driver for Gen7/8 under a new name.
You may have confused this with the "Amber" branch i.e. Mesa 21.3, after which the "classic Mesa" i965 driver was removed and replaced with crocus.

They could've waited at least for the next stable Mesa version release.

They did. This driver split happens in in Mesa 22.3 (which is in development), while the to-be-released 22.2 the ANV driver will support all Intel generations it supported.

[Guest]

I'm honestly a little surprised they didn't make a new "radeonRDNA" driver. That would have been a clean breaking point, if they were going to take one. But, if there are enough similarities then maybe it's easier to have a single driver to maintain.

I may be wrong, but didn't AMD drop ROCm support for Polaris out of nowhere?

[schmidtbag]

I may be wrong, but didn't AMD drop ROCm support for Polaris out of nowhere?

Not sure since I haven't paid much attention to ROCm, but, I wouldn't be surprised if that'd get dropped regardless of whether they made a new driver for RDNA.

[fahrenheit]

Good bit about this split, hasvk will only advertise vulkan 1.1 on gen8, 1.0 on gen 7.5 and no vulkan on gen 7.
And as gen9+ fully implements vulkan 1.2 and 1.3 it makes docs/features easier to parse. Now someone at intel also needs to make sure that document adds the new driver and that it is up to date..