RADV Ray-Tracing Now Rendering Quake II RTX Correctly But Very Slowly

[phoronix]

Phoronix: RADV Ray-Tracing Now Rendering Quake II RTX Correctly But Very Slowly

The open-source Mesa RADV driver for independent Radeon Vulkan driver support on Linux has been working towards supporting ray-tracing for months. Progress is being made with the latest being more test cases passes and even the Quake II RTX game rendering correctly, but the performance is far short of being satisfactory yet...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RADV-RT-Quake-II-RTX-Correct

[Linuxxx]

Just try to imagine where Linux gaming would be stuck right now if it weren't for all the money & talent VALVe & Google throws at the challenge right now!!

I know that AMD is really adored around here, but objectively observed, they are not doing nearly as much as they easily could do!

I mean, why on earth must the (AMD-ignored) RADV developers figure all of this out on their own, when AMD could easily at least acknowledge RADV exists and provide them with some form of documentation to ease the burden of initial bring-up of new features like in this case for ray-tracing.

Just had the urge to leave this here...

[pal666]

why on earth must the (AMD-ignored) RADV developers figure all of this out on their own, when AMD could easily at least acknowledge RADV exists and provide them with some form of documentation to ease the burden of initial bring-up of new features like in this case for ray-tracing.

were did you get that from? it certainly doesn't follow from blog post, it had all needed hardware knowledge in april post. and btw, documentation usually takes some time and money, so you could get it later than you'd like

[agd5f]

Additionally, there are AMD developers on IRC and the various mailing lists who are always willing to answer technical questions.

[Linuxxx]

were did you get that from? it certainly doesn't follow from blog post, it had all needed hardware knowledge in april post. and btw, documentation usually takes some time and money, so you could get it later than you'd like

Actually, forget that I only asked for some documentation!
You know what would be really cool to see?
Having marek hack away at the RADV driver instead of RadeonSI !!

Just think about it:
With the upcoming Steam Deck relying on the RADV driver for most of the heavy lifting (DirectX 9-12 --> Vulkan, since OpenGL is almost non-existent in games & Gallium-Nine too buggy to be trusted), AMD could only benefit from having at least one developer assigned to work on RADV full-time!

I mean, when some early adopters complain about some buggy games on their Steam Deck, what will AMD's response be?
Shame Valve publicly for not using their inferior AMDGPU-Pro driver?

Seriously, having RADV in the best state it can be should be in AMD's best interest!

bridgman, any way You could bring this up and discuss internally @ AMD HQ or even with Dr. Lisa Su? (I'm pretty sure she would greenlight this in the blink of an eye! )

If not, it would be at least good to know why exactly that is not a possibility...

[Linuxxx]

Additionally, there are AMD developers on IRC and the various mailing lists who are always willing to answer questions.

That's really good to hear!

And since You are here, same question:

How feasible would it be for AMD to have at least some developer time assigned to RADV directly?

Thanks for any answer in advance!

[Marco-GG]

I mean, why on earth must the (AMD-ignored) RADV developers figure all of this out on their own, when AMD could easily at least acknowledge RADV exists and provide them with some form of documentation to ease the burden of initial bring-up of new features like in this case for ray-tracing.

AFAIK, they released the ISA long ago
https://developer.amd.com/wp-content...vember2020.pdf

And as AMD takes care of AMDGPU driver, it's not like they didn't do anything.

[ezst036]

Actually, forget that I only asked for some documentation!
You know what would be really cool to see?
Having marek hack away at the RADV driver instead of RadeonSI !!

There are some who suspect AMD is working on specific items on the open source stack so that it can be used for the FirePro and ProWX CAD cards. This would allow them to ditch entirely the old closed source driver and it would bring in many more developers on the open source driver.

Thinking of this from a long term view, this is definitely the way for AMD to go.

[Linuxxx]

Just one more thing that suddenly crossed my mind:
I actually fear that the success of the Steam Deck could turn out to become a PR disaster for AMD once released!
"Y though?" you ask, like totally confused?

Well, just imagine a click-bait headline like this on a Windows-centric cash-grab site:
"AMD so incompetent @ writing proper GPU drivers that VALVE had to do it themselves!!!11"

I say this because I'm immensely sure that the majority of Windows users who are also interested in the Steam Deck would be pretty shocked once they find out that it is not only possible for a third-party to write a Linux GPU driver [since they never heard about the power of open-source et al.], but to write one that is in fact more performant than what they are getting on Windows with AMD's official driver!

If AMD would at least publicly endorse the RADV driver and spend some resources of their own on it, then I think the expected backlash wouldn't be so harsh!

Look, I'm not saying this because I want this to happen, quite the contrary, but at least consider that the driver situation could totally blow up in AMD's face, since after the latest round of early-dropping of still perfectly-functioning pre-POLARIS hardware a lot of AMD's Windows customers were ... well, very angry, I guess?!

[CochainComplex]

Nice to see Raytracing support maturing on RADV. I'm still dreaming of "Co-processor"Raytracing on pre RDNA2 cards. It would be super cool just to use an sligtly older unused GPU which is only doing Raytracing...I know its utopia.