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AMD Pushes Updated AMDVLK Vulkan Code Following Adrenalin 2020 Unveil

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  • AMD Pushes Updated AMDVLK Vulkan Code Following Adrenalin 2020 Unveil

    Phoronix: AMD Pushes Updated AMDVLK Vulkan Code Following Adrenalin 2020 Unveil

    Earlier this week AMD unveiled the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver and we await a Radeon Software for Linux / AMDGPU-PRO driver update for Linux users on supported distributions. But AMD has begun pushing some updated AMDVLK open-source Vulkan driver code ahead of a possible tagged release in the next few days...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Can somebody help me understand what's the point of AMDVLK? Why wouldn't AMD contribute to RADV directly to make Mesa better as a whole and to improve on already great RADV? The more I read about AMDVLK, the more I become confused...

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Ciren View Post
      Can somebody help me understand what's the point of AMDVLK? Why wouldn't AMD contribute to RADV directly to make Mesa better as a whole and to improve on already great RADV? The more I read about AMDVLK, the more I become confused...
      Easy:

      AMD is unfortunately primarily still a Windows first, Linux maybe second company.
      Therefore, AMD has a (rather terrible) first-class Windows driver with which they also have to support Vulkan software, at least the few that actually use it on Windows.
      And since they don't want to spend resources on the same task twice, they just open-sourced their Linux-unfriendly forged Vulkan driver & called it a day!

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Ciren View Post
        Can somebody help me understand what's the point of AMDVLK? Why wouldn't AMD contribute to RADV directly to make Mesa better as a whole and to improve on already great RADV? The more I read about AMDVLK, the more I become confused...
        They want a project that they have control over. It also looks bad if you say you support a platform but don't have an "official" driver for it.

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        • #5
          I don't know why does AMD not realize that it is super easy to make Radeon Settings for Linux...

          ...spoiler: it's just adding a few Linux-specific bits in the code... the rest is Qt and should work...

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Ciren View Post
            Can somebody help me understand what's the point of AMDVLK? Why wouldn't AMD contribute to RADV directly to make Mesa better as a whole and to improve on already great RADV? The more I read about AMDVLK, the more I become confused...
            Yeah, it was and still is damn stupid. Radv was available shortly after specs were available, but it took AMD well over a year to release amdvlk and by the time they did radv was already far superior and still is. AMD claims amdvlk saves them time, but radv already existed over a year before amdvlk, plus radv gets contributions from every major industry player.... AMD is basically the sole contributor to amdvlk.... So I just can't see how it saves them time, in fact time itself has proven amdvlk takes far more time than radv....

            Literally the only saving grace I can think of for amdvlk's existence is that radv can use it as a reference....

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            • #7
              Originally posted by tildearrow View Post
              I don't know why does AMD not realize that it is super easy to make Radeon Settings for Linux...

              ...spoiler: it's just adding a few Linux-specific bits in the code... the rest is Qt and should work...
              Yeah, but if they did it would basically be blank.... The linux drivers just don't expose that much configuration. Hell, mesa doesn't even support overriding antialiasing, which I think is critically important for things like every single Intel graphics and laptops and low end discrete GPU's
              Last edited by duby229; 13 December 2019, 01:45 AM.

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              • #8
                You can't override AA in any modern game on Windows either.
                Though it would be nice to have it for old games in Wine, especially SSAA.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by duby229 View Post
                  AMD claims amdvlk saves them time, but radv already existed over a year before amdvlk, plus radv gets contributions from every major industry player.... AMD is basically the sole contributor to amdvlk.... So I just can't see how it saves them time, in fact time itself has proven amdvlk takes far more time than radv....
                  As far as I understand it, AMDVLK has a code base that is largely shared with the windows Vulkan driver, so for them it's easier to modify some bits for Linux than reimplementing features in RADV, plus going through all the review stuff etc.

                  I personally also think it's kinda useless except that AMD can say that they have an official driver.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by 9Strike View Post
                    As far as I understand it, AMDVLK has a code base that is largely shared with the windows Vulkan driver, so for them it's easier to modify some bits for Linux than reimplementing features in RADV, plus going through all the review stuff etc.

                    I personally also think it's kinda useless except that AMD can say that they have an official driver.
                    I can't say that makes sense. In that case, they don't have an "official" opengl driver, or modesetting driver, or framebuffer driver.... I guess AMD needs to port over their windows drivers for the kernel, opengl, and modesetting in order to make them "official" too.... Right? Right....

                    Radeonsi exists in mesa and is contributed to by every major player. Radeon exists in xorg as the modesetting driver and while it's largely complete, it also got contributions by every major player. And the KMS driver exists in the kernel and it too got contributions by every major player.

                    EDIT: I'm just trying to say that if AMD would contribute to radv then it would be just as official as radeonsi or radeon or KMS.... Porting a Windows driver or developing outside of upstream codebases is not what makes a driver "official". In fact I'd argue radv is far more official than amdvlk is -because- it's part of an upstream codebase that is developed by every major player except AMD....
                    Last edited by duby229; 13 December 2019, 08:18 AM.

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