AMD's Open-Source Mesa Driver Continues To Be Ruthlessly Optimized For Workstation Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD's Open-Source Mesa Driver Continues To Be Ruthlessly Optimized For Workstation Performance

One of the areas where AMD's long-standing "PRO" OpenGL driver has generally held an advantage over RadeonSI Gallium3D has been around workstation software but that has been changing...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RadeonSI-Close-To-Pro-Snx

[user1]

Does that open up the possibility of phasing out the pro-OpenGL driver sometime in the future, and instead of releasing the whole amdgpu-pro stack, release only pro-Vulkan and pro-OpenCL as standalone packages, since those two still have some advantages?

[M@GOid]

Does that open up the possibility of phasing out the pro-OpenGL driver sometime in the future, and instead of releasing the whole amdgpu-pro stack, release only pro-Vulkan and pro-OpenCL as standalone packages, since those two still have some advantages?

I think this is the intention, otherwise they wouldn't waste resources improving the mesa driver for this kind of workload.

How long it will take is another matter, since they could met some resistance along the way from internal management, software vendors or even clients, after all, people may be afraid of code that is ruthlessly developed.

[Serafean]

So it took 10+ years from playing complete catchup, to getting to the point "Binary blob might be completely forgotten about". Good job everyone involved.
A pleasure to be an AMD linux customer.

[uid313]

AMD has a weird strategy with multiple redundant stacks. They should just open source everything.

It will be interesting to see how AMD and Nvidia will be affected when Intel launches their new graphics card. Intel will most likely be coming with great open source drivers and support already merged upstream prior to release date when the cards are out for sale.

[M@GOid]

AMD has a weird strategy with multiple redundant stacks. They should just open source everything.

It will be interesting to see how AMD and Nvidia will be affected when Intel launches their new graphics card. Intel will most likely be coming with great open source drivers and support already merged upstream prior to release date when the cards are out for sale.

I wouldn't have high hopes on the Intel discrete GPU in the first couple years. First, their drivers are not that good, even if released early, not to mention the lack of game developers (mostly AAA studios) interest in debug the game on Intel hardware. Second, there is a reason Nvidia and ATI were the survivors of the early GPU wars. I seriously doubt Intel will come with something on par with those two in the beginning. Their first card (DG1) barely touched comparable cards released 4/5 years ago from the competition.

[user1]

I think this is the intention, otherwise they wouldn't waste resources improving the mesa driver for this kind of workload.

How long it will take is another matter, since they could met some resistance along the way from internal management, software vendors or even clients, after all, people may be afraid of code that is ruthlessly developed.

Yeah, I mean this strategy makes the most sense at this point. Also, releasing the other two drivers as standalone packages will make it possible to install them on more distributions, not just LTS ones. Regarding the transition to RadeonSi, hope I'm not wrong, but I heard since Mesa 21.0.0 RadeonSi supports every OpenGL extension it possibly can, that means including those that Workstation software requires. So I don't think the transition is going to be painful.

[uid313]

I wouldn't have high hopes on the Intel discrete GPU in the first couple years. First, their drivers are not that good, even if released early, not to mention the lack of game developers (mostly AAA studios) interest in debug the game on Intel hardware. Second, there is a reason Nvidia and ATI were the survivors of the early GPU wars. I seriously doubt Intel will come with something on par with those two in the beginning. Their first card (DG1) barely touched comparable cards released 4/5 years ago from the competition.

I don't know, it seems DG1 was more of a preview card for developers. The upcoming DG2 card seems to perform on par with GeForce 3070 and Radeon RX 6700 XT.

[grigi]

Also, Intels Linux drivers are just a much better experience than the windows ones. They might lack performance in some cases, but in regards to weird bugs is far superior.

[siyia]

Savage!