Open-Source "Terakan" Vulkan Driver For Radeon HD 6000 Series Shown On Windows

[elbar]

When you look at Windows documentation and how Windows driver should behave, some insanity would bring to MS engineers a new hint how to disrupt their further driver development because also vendors like AMD do their job to write them or prepare them for other companies and MS acknowledge them and sign them and then are downloadable not only from windows update but also from MS separate portal where they could be downloaded even from other systems from official search prompt if anybody needs such things :-).

Simply said, such portal means that there is some docs to write such drivers but there is a lot of dll and docs simply missing when MS does not store such info to allow write competition drivers which MS can sign also and then such XML driver madness could be further distilled in MS India Enterprise when Balmer is out and Paul Allen is dead and MS is without proper Western Civilization captain but also some from such civilization on board and wild sea is cruel like some MS signed Vulkan drivers on Windows :-)

[Dukenukemx]

The main benefit to having a Vulkan driver for these GPU's is not to run games like Baldur's Gate 3, but to run DX11 games which these GPU's were meant for. Not a problem on Windows and you can even install the Omega Drivers to get a more modern driver for this older GPU's. On Linux you can do DX11->OpenGL but that's not very good for performance. I'm not even sure if FP64 support was ever added to these GPU's? There are also a number of games that might benefit from Vulkan on these GPU's, like Hollow Knight. Don't forget emulators.

[Tomin]

I wonder which kernel driver this uses.

[mxan]

There are lots of side effects to such a thing, for instance, could Zink run on this and offer up to date OpenGL on it? For low demanding applications, such as Older Windows Games, Emulation software, and older machines, this puts it in the running to allow things like Wayland to do basic Vulkan displays.

However, Mesa is something that is used on more than just Linux. In fact, it is used when porting Linux GPU DRM drivers in other OSes. Things like NetBSD and FreeBSD have compatibility layers that take these drivers and allow these devices to work on their systems.
GenodeOS does the same thing, and other projects, such as AmigaOS 4 has drivers based on this, and MorphOS are in the process of adding drivers for this class of card.

There is no compatibility layer, Mesa runs entirely in userspace. The DRM (kernel side drivers) are mostly developed by the same people developing Mesa, but they are developed officially as part of Linux not as part of Mesa, and there are no compatibility layers there either, they are just ported straight to the BSDs.

[willmore]

Anyone know where this coder is located? I've got a colection of 6000 cards in NA that I'd be willing to donate if they want them. International shipping is prohibitive, though.

[dragorth]

There is no compatibility layer, Mesa runs entirely in userspace. The DRM (kernel side drivers) are mostly developed by the same people developing Mesa, but they are developed officially as part of Linux not as part of Mesa, and there are no compatibility layers there either, they are just ported straight to the BSDs.

I may be confusing the *BSD solutions with GenodeOS who calls their Linux driver stack a compatibility layer. Thanks for the correction.

[lowflyer]

Even if this driver will never achieve a real-world use, The experience this coder gathered through this exercise is priceless!

BTW: I've still got a 6450 and two 6950 cards lying around.

[dragorth]

There are 2011 MacBooks running HD6000 era GPUs. 12 year old hardware is fine for most purposes, it is us that are pushing the envelope, most people aren't.

[Eirikr1848]

The main benefit to having a Vulkan driver for these GPU's is not to run games like Baldur's Gate 3, but to run DX11 games which these GPU's were meant for. Not a problem on Windows and you can even install the Omega Drivers to get a more modern driver for this older GPU's. On Linux you can do DX11->OpenGL but that's not very good for performance. I'm not even sure if FP64 support was ever added to these GPU's? There are also a number of games that might benefit from Vulkan on these GPU's, like Hollow Knight. Don't forget emulators.

The formerly named Amermine Zone / NimeZ drivers do some tinkering magic on windows as well. Not sure if you can do hybrid Amermine Zone + Omega - but maybe?

[Eirikr1848]

There are 2011 MacBooks running HD6000 era GPUs. 12 year old hardware is fine for most purposes, it is us that are pushing the envelope, most people aren't.

My 17” 2011 MacBook Pro yearns for the day it can play some games again on Linux with Proton using ye olde Vulkan wrapper.