AMD Isn't Done Yet Optimizing The Mesa RadeonSI Driver For Workstation OpenGL

[oibaf]

Why exactly would you want a worse opengl driver? Zink will frankly never beat a native opengl driver, it may get close but it will never match or beat it. Its fine as a compatibility layer but for everything else Zink is unsuited.

Let's say there are 10 different vendors each with 10 developers, 5 working on the vulkan driver and 5 on the opengl driver. Total of 100 developers, 5 per vendor/driver.

Using zink + vulkan driver each vendor have to just manage 1 driver, as well as the common zink driver.

So each vendor may devote 8 developers to vulkan driver and the other 2 to zink, so that zink would total 20 developers.

Also opengl is probably losing interest in the long term and applications using it will eventually have enough performance.

The final result is that there would be much more developers to each driver at the same total development effort, and eventually each driver could be better than now.

It's just an ideal example in the very long term, YMMV and usual side effects apply.

[Crocodilus]

It’s never done with these graphics drivers on Linux . Especially for already sold cards,which should have solid support from day one .

[coder]

It’s never done with these graphics drivers on Linux . Especially for already sold cards,which should have solid support from day one .

They were supported with the proprietary driver, but this is the open source userspace stack.

Also, it's not as if Windows drivers aren't an ongoing area of optimizations, even years after GPUs launch.

[Crocodilus]

They were supported with the proprietary driver, but this is the open source userspace stack.

Also, it's not as if Windows drivers aren't an ongoing area of optimizations, even years after GPUs launch.

Escuse me ,I thought I saw there ,in the title : “AMD has not finish..” . If AMD is involved,you would think they have at least a couple devs who would give decent all-around functionality from the get go.

Ofc Windows drivers get optimised at times,but all functionality is there from the first driver release that support a given HW. Mostly they optimise for gaming,these days,I presume .

[coder]

Escuse me ,I thought I saw there ,in the title : “AMD has not finish..”

... with optimizations. Same as on Windows.

If AMD is involved,you would think they have at least a couple devs who would give decent all-around functionality from the get go.

They did.

Ofc Windows drivers get optimised at times,but all functionality is there from the first driver release that support a given HW. Mostly they optimise for gaming,these days,I presume .

That presumption would be false. They periodically do optimize their Windows OpenGL drivers, too.

[Crocodilus]

... with optimizations. Same as on Windows.


They did.


That presumption would be false. They periodically do optimize their Windows OpenGL drivers, too.

Well obviously they didnt do it properly. I am not talking about OpenGL ,if it needs constant ‘optimisations’ ,its an obsolete and bad platform .

On Windows, OpenGL is mostly irrelevant . Dont shift the subiect from third hand focus for Linux drivers to OpenGL . I was talking about Windows drivers,those which use Directx or whatever platform you probably know better than I.

**So to summerise, the main idea is that Linux focus from the Big tech in desktop space is minimal,coroborated with old OpenGL platform ,always in need of tinkering,makes it for a frustrating experience ,even at the principial level .**

THAT I was trying to say,dont dazzle me with nitpicked details and focus shifting.

[coder]

Well obviously they didnt do it properly. I am not talking about OpenGL ,if it needs constant ‘optimisations’ ,its an obsolete and bad platform .

The more you write, the more you show you don't know what you're talking about.

On Windows, OpenGL is mostly irrelevant .

Again, showing you don't know what you're talking about. OpenGL is still used in many professional applications, like CAD, because its output is rigorously specified.

the main idea is that Linux focus from the Big tech in desktop space is minimal,coroborated with old OpenGL platform

No, I wouldn't say so. Workstation graphics support for OpenGL on Linux has been pretty solid, for a long time.

[smitty3268]

Let's say there are 10 different vendors each with 10 developers, 5 working on the vulkan driver and 5 on the opengl driver. Total of 100 developers, 5 per vendor/driver.

Using zink + vulkan driver each vendor have to just manage 1 driver, as well as the common zink driver.

So each vendor may devote 8 developers to vulkan driver and the other 2 to zink, so that zink would total 20 developers.

Also opengl is probably losing interest in the long term and applications using it will eventually have enough performance.

The final result is that there would be much more developers to each driver at the same total development effort, and eventually each driver could be better than now.

It's just an ideal example in the very long term, YMMV and usual side effects apply.

AMD devotes 0 people to their vulkan driver. (It's all done by the windows team)

And if you move the 5 devs they have working on their opengl driver over to zink.... It's still just 5 devs working on an opengl driver. One which is less suited to their hardware, has lots of new abstractions/details they need to work around, and with lots more bugs and missing optimizations suddenly.

I'm not sure where you think the other 95 devs are going to come from. Nvidia isn't going to start developing Zink. Nobody else really has anyone spare, other than Intel... So another 5 devs there? Seems like a net loss to me, when the existing GL driver is already done. Zink is mostly interesting for new hardware that doesn't have a capable GL driver yet.

[coder]

Nobody else really has anyone spare, other than Intel...

FYI, Intel just cut 10 GPU software development engineers from their California offices. I don't know any more than that. That's just what was disclosed, as part of mandatory reporting requirements.

[bridgman]

I’m pretty sure AMD’s OpenSource and Propriety drivers are now the same code…. They have no reason to have two separate codebases

Not for OpenGL (although it is true for kernel driver and multimedia) - the Windows OpenGL team rebuilt their driver to run over PAL and seem to have significantly improved performance in the process. Our packaged drivers let you choose between Mesa OpenGL (open source) and the new PAL-based OpenGL (aka "OGL-P") at install time.