AMDVLK 2021.Q1.1 Brings Switchable Graphics Layer, RDNA 2 Tuning

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDVLK 2021.Q1.1 Brings Switchable Graphics Layer, RDNA 2 Tuning

AMDVLK 2021.Q1.1 is out this morning as the first update of the year for the open-source official AMD Vulkan Linux driver and it's an exciting update...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDVLK-2021.Q1.1-Released

[baryluk]

Yep. That is a nice way, would make it easier to have both installed at the same time and switch very quickly. It would be nice if Mesa device_selection layer was extended to support selecting by driver vendor ID, not just the device vendor / model ID (which would be the same for radv and amdvlk, because obviously they use same underlying hardware and set same IDs / PCI IDs),

[skeevy420]

bridgman
Completely off topic, but is the tariff going to effect APU prices or just GPU prices? I assume AMD is passing the buck onto us. Sucks for us consumers, but I'm not gonna blame AMD for government dipshittery.

[aufkrawall]

Yep. That is a nice way, would make it easier to have both installed at the same time and switch very quickly.

To have a redundant feature just for not having to specify the path to the ICD loader? I'm not really convinced.
I'd rather see raytracing support (and perhaps finally better vsync flipping behavior for fps < refresh rate).

Though I'm not all about complaining, the driver seems to have gotten really solid in general (especially -pro).

[kiffmet]

I don't understand the point of the switchable graphics layer. There already is a VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable, which lets one select a driver and that implementation is standardized.

[baryluk]

I don't understand the point of the switchable graphics layer. There already is a VK_ICD_FILENAMES environment variable, which lets one select a driver and that implementation is standardized.

The issue is that:

1) There is no way to order VK_ICD_FILENAMES, vulkan loader is free to read them as they wish.

2) VK_ICD_FILENAMES requires absolute paths. These differ based on distro, installed drivers, if you manually compiled drivers, 32-bit vs 64-bit, etc. etc.

2) Different applications and users can have different policies of what they want to achieve. So, VK_ICD_FILENAMES should provide all drivers, then a separate layer should check them all and select what one needs, but if app wants, i.e. to override it.