Radeon RADV Driver Merge Request Opened To Use ACO By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon RADV Driver Merge Request Opened To Use ACO By Default

A merge request opened at the end of last week would now have the Mesa Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver default to using the Valve-backed ACO shader compiler in place of the default LLVM AMDGPU back-end...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RADV-MR-ACO-Default-Open

[shmerl]

Looking forwards to more optimizations in aco.

[qarium]

Finally I really wait for this for years.

This will finally fix the problem of distros like debian 10/11 who can not update MESA because system depent on old LLVM and new MESA drivers need newer LLVM version.

With ACO as default and maybe ACO as OpenGL compiler to we can finally update mesa without any touch of system wide compilers like LLVM.

This will result in very up to date mesa drivers and the rest of the system can stay on outdated LLVM fot the old software who use this in the system.

Thank you Valve for fixing this ugly dirty LLVM problem.

[pal666]

This will finally fix the problem of distros like debian 10/11 who can not update MESA because system depent on old LLVM and new MESA drivers need newer LLVM version.

With ACO as default and maybe ACO as OpenGL compiler to we can finally update mesa without any touch of system wide compilers like LLVM.

maybe? maybe you should or maybe you shouldn't just break every opengl app?

[qarium]

maybe? maybe you should or maybe you shouldn't just break every opengl app?

well... as soon as possible would be the very best.

[pyler]

Is amdgpu llvm backend dead now basically?

[shmerl]

Is amdgpu llvm backend dead now basically?

No, it will be still developed. amdvlk is using it and it will be still supported in Mesa.

[bridgman]

The llvm backend is used in the ROCm compilers (HCC, HIP, OpenCL, OpenMP), and AFAIK our compute teams do most of the work adding llvm support for new HW.

As shmerl mentioned llvm is also the only compiler option for Mesa OpenGL at the moment.

[zboszor]

This will finally fix the problem of distros like debian 10/11 who can not update MESA because system depent on old LLVM and new MESA drivers need newer LLVM version.

Don't hold your breath yet, this PR won't fix this particular situation. It's just a runtime default change, Mesa still needs a recent LLVM to compile and link against.
When radeonsi gets the ACO compiler treatment, they may implement making the LLVM dependency optional.

But for now, both backends are available in radv (allowing to switch between them) and only LLVM in radeonsi.

[shmerl]

As shmerl mentioned llvm is also the only compiler option for Mesa OpenGL at the moment.

Do you think someone like Google might start using radv/aco for Stadia? I know they are using amdvlk/llvm now, but I wonder what they'll do if aco will get competitive enough to provide performance benefits. Stadia only supports Vulkan use cases, so they don't worry about OpenGL.