NVIDIA Releases Updated Vulkan Driver

[bug77]

Sure, but that's not what was said. Graham was talking specifically about adding SI support to amdgpu, not adding Vulkan support to SI.

At the time we were exploring a few different options, including extending amdgpu back to SI and extending the libdrm-amdgpu code to run over radeon IOCTLs on SI. I think there was a third but don't remember it at the moment.

Yeah, I was just trolling.
It's the same as the discussion about Fermi I guess: at some point it doesn't pay to add support that will be too weak to run things anyway, by the time both Vulkan support and Vulkan titles are upon us. Many people consider just the cost of the initial implementation, but forget that once you implement something (anything), you have to follow up with support. And that's additional cost.

[Guest]

Does this mean Fermi cards will be dropped to a legacy driver branch?

[drSeehas]

... the 7990 and AMDGPU. Released in 2013, dropped in 2015.)

???
Nothing is dropped for the HD 7990!
Btw: AFAIR the HD 7990 was sold only a few months.

[azari]

It's the same as the discussion about Fermi I guess: at some point it doesn't pay to add support that will be too weak to run things anyway, by the time both Vulkan support and Vulkan titles are upon us.

Well, AMD is actually selling GCN 1.0 cards even now, in the R9/R7 300 series, so I'm glad that AMD are planning to support all their GCN 1.0 cards with Vulkan, and also glad they've decided to go with adding GCN 1.0 support to AMDGPU, as opposed to the libdrm hack that bridgman had alluded to in the past.

One of the benefits of Vulkan is precisely that you can run games on weaker hardware than with OpenGL, due to less overhead and the game's ability to optimize specifically for their needs, so in my opinion, even cards in the current R7 series are still going to be in use by the time Vulkan games start hitting the market en masse. DotA2 is supposed to release Vulkan support soon, and that's a very good example of a game that isn't super demanding in resources, but will really gain from the ability to run on underpowered hardware with Vulkan, which used to be impossible in OpenGL. Given that it's an F2P game with cosmetic cash shop items, Valve gains a lot from many people being able to play it, even on weaker APU systems, older hardware, and so on.

AMD also gains a lot from people finally seeing what their GCN-based hardware is really capable of, as opposed to the performance being hidden behind crufty high-level OpenGL and D3D9/D3D11 drivers due to the overhead and various issues like lacking game-specific optimizations and/or heuristics and all manner of other nonsense. Nvidia meanwhile was pretty comfortable with the high-level driver stack, since they were really good at the heuristics and game-specific stuff, as well as good at the bureaucracy of making deals with game devs. Hopefully now we'll see more free market competition on actual hardware, rather than software profiling nonsense.

[duby229]

Well, AMD is actually selling GCN 1.0 cards even now, in the R9/R7 300 series, so I'm glad that AMD are planning to support all their GCN 1.0 cards with Vulkan, and also glad they've decided to go with adding GCN 1.0 support to AMDGPU, as opposed to the libdrm hack that bridgman had alluded to in the past.

One of the benefits of Vulkan is precisely that you can run games on weaker hardware than with OpenGL, due to less overhead and the game's ability to optimize specifically for their needs, so in my opinion, even cards in the current R7 series are still going to be in use by the time Vulkan games start hitting the market en masse. DotA2 is supposed to release Vulkan support soon, and that's a very good example of a game that isn't super demanding in resources, but will really gain from the ability to run on underpowered hardware with Vulkan, which used to be impossible in OpenGL. Given that it's an F2P game with cosmetic cash shop items, Valve gains a lot from many people being able to play it, even on weaker APU systems, older hardware, and so on.

AMD also gains a lot from people finally seeing what their GCN-based hardware is really capable of, as opposed to the performance being hidden behind crufty high-level OpenGL and D3D9/D3D11 drivers due to the overhead and various issues like lacking game-specific optimizations and/or heuristics and all manner of other nonsense. Nvidia meanwhile was pretty comfortable with the high-level driver stack, since they were really good at the heuristics and game-specific stuff, as well as good at the bureaucracy of making deals with game devs. Hopefully now we'll see more free market competition on actual hardware, rather than software profiling nonsense.

+1. Totally agree with you.

[drSeehas]

... they've decided to go with adding GCN 1.0 support to AMDGPU, as opposed to the libdrm hack that bridgman had alluded to in the past. ...

Is this official?

[smitty3268]

Is this official?

I certainly hadn't heard it.

I'm also not sure why modifying libdrm is considered a hack while modifying the kernel driver isn't.

[duby229]

I certainly hadn't heard it.

I'm also not sure why modifying libdrm is considered a hack while modifying the kernel driver isn't.

I think as long as the end result is Vulkan support, I'm perfectly happy with that as a solution.

[bridgman]

Well, AMD is actually selling GCN 1.0 cards even now, in the R9/R7 300 series, so I'm glad that AMD are planning to support all their GCN 1.0 cards with Vulkan...

There was never any question about that, just about what the low-level bits would look like for SI.

... and also glad they've decided to go with adding GCN 1.0 support to AMDGPU, as opposed to the libdrm hack that bridgman had alluded to in the past.

It's not decided. I said we were leaning in that direction:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum...181#post854181

[azari]

It's not decided. I said we were leaning in that direction:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum...181#post854181

I was actually referring to the posts on page 9 of this thread by ronsaldo and you; it seemed to me like "option a" was already underway, and based on your comments there it sounded like you were going to sync your efforts together with the work ronsaldo started.