Happy Holidays: AMD Finally Pushing Out Open-Source Vulkan Driver

[jrch2k8]

I don't understand it.

So they open sourced driver but it will still come with GPU-Pro.

Mesa users won't benefit of that. What is the point really?

my guess it will be:

1.) RadeonSI + RADV = most desktop linux distro

2.) AMD Vk + AMDGPU_PRO = enterprises distro

that way everyone is happy, plus having this other implementation RADV devs can cherry pick the missing optimization bits faster where needed and once RadeonSI switches to NIR we will have a fully interoperable OpenGL + Vulkan set of drivers

[libv]

Given the games Airlied and his friends played against the proper open source (mostly display) driver called RadeonHD a decade ago, will he now also devolve this one into a baseless shit-throwing contest? Or will he embrace the AMD solution, like he did with display a decade ago (which locked us all into a significantly non-free display driver back then), but this time quietly so?

Time will tell but my money is on noise, despite the fact that part-timers just cannot compete against full-time employees these days. I just hope that there are no technically insane solutions being pushed down our throats this time, but that was definitely not Daves priority last time.

[gnarlin]

Multiple libre graphics driver for same API and same hardware with compatible licenses with code that might benefit both projects?! What alternative universe moon magic is this? Oh well, I'll just let my pessimism compensate.... oh, here we go: it's a huge duplication of effort! There we go, I'm back to doom and gloom. Much better.

[FireBurn]

Given the games Airlied and his friends played against the proper open source (mostly display) driver called RadeonHD a decade ago, will he now also devolve this one into a baseless shit-throwing contest? Or will he embrace the AMD solution, like he did with display a decade ago (which locked us all into a significantly non-free display driver back then), but this time quietly so?

Time will tell but my money is on noise, despite the fact that part-timers just cannot compete against full-time employees these days. I just hope that there are no technically insane solutions being pushed down our throats this time, but that was definitely not Daves priority last time.

Go crawl back into your cave unless you can give up this decade long grudge

[libv]

Multiple libre graphics driver for same API and same hardware with compatible licenses with code that might benefit both projects?! What alternative universe moon magic is this? Oh well, I'll just let my pessimism compensate.... oh, here we go: it's a huge duplication of effort! There we go, I'm back to doom and gloom. Much better.

Mostly, it means that no bugs are ever fixed on either side. People will hop between drivers until one works and then not bother filing a bug or helping to work towards fixing a bug.

[mphuZ]

RADV R.I.P. ?

If this driver is not included in the Mesa, it will greatly affect the user experience? Hopefully, AMD, Mesa and the Valve in the future something will come up!

Thus moving forward we're likely to see these two separate open-source Radeon Vulkan drivers continue

Linux style. Then another third newfangled driver will appear.. This issue should be resolved NOW and as quickly as possible!

..the code they are pushing out was stripped down to just their Linux code

..and they will support third-party contributions to their driver

But what about community support? If the community will make a contribution to the Linux driver, AMD developers will bear it in Windows?

[schmidtbag]

And meanwhile this is why I felt from the very beginning that the attention toward RADV was better off going toward nouveau, which has been getting no love this whole time. Everyone told me to shut up, and yet now people are realizing the complicated and/or confusing situation we're in. Yeah I know, at the rate AMD was going at, it wasn't very promising that they'd ever open up these drivers. But I for one took Bridgman's words seriously. And this isn't to say I don't appreciate or admire the work of the RADV devs, because those who contributed did an amazing job. I just feel that time and skill would've been better spent on something that may never get Vulkan support (not just nouveau). To clarify, I don't use nouveau, but that doesn't mean I nouveau users should be left behind.

At the very least, RADV is still a good alternative to AMD's drivers, since it is a mesa driver. Makes for a simpler out-of-the-box situation.

[shmerl]

Congratulations! It would be nice if both drivers could be installed alongside each other in normal distros, and then you'd just pick one for particular game to see which one performs better.

Upstreaming and packaging are now what we'll wait for. Plus I guess some easy way to select a default driver when both are installed.

[Nille_kungen]

I always embrace open source code drops but i don't like thee timing.
When David Airlie finally put RADV aside and started to work on getting R600g up to speed with extensions this code drops.
I hope airlied will continue with R600g and not jumping on the RADV straight away.
That said do we need another vulkan driver when RADV is working so well?
I expect that many linux distributions will ship RADV and Radeon Open Vulkan driver will be an add-on for the end user to install.
But maybe Radeon Open Vulkan has some advantage if that OpenCL+Vulkan API merge happens.

[jrch2k8]

I for one took AMD's/Bridgman's words seriously the whole time. From the very beginning, I knew this day was going to happen, where we get stuck in this confusing/complicated situation. And yet, people told me to shut up, despite that my interest was for the sake of the community and the valuable time of people like Arlie. Projects like nouveau or freedreno (mind you, neither of which I use) really could've used the effort put into RADV. And now, both drivers are lacking while AMD has two open Vulkan drivers.

At least RADV is currently a good alternative due to being a mesa driver, and a lean one at that. AMD's driver is pretty bloated.

expect RADV + Mesa drivers and AMD Vk with Pro + some buffer sharing hack to support OpenGL on mixed installs(like mesa + AMD Vk) to claim GL 4.6 support.

At least for few months I expect whining in some distros because X or Y game is faster on X or Y driver but in the end I expect RADV for desktops like RadeonSI did for OpenGL(due to tighter integration) and AMD Vk to thrive on enterprise distro that are way too far behind on mesa releases to have proper RADV support(like Centos/Rhel).

Outside making RADV development faster I don't expect this Vulkan driver to change the status quo this late in the game, specially because I just don't see jimmy the noob user to go out of his way to install another vulkan driver when stuff just work OOB with any recent enough distro