Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Moving To NVK + Zink For OpenGL On Newer GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Moving To NVK + Zink For OpenGL On Newer GPUs

Mesa 24.1 Git has landed the initial infrastructure for allowing drivers to choose to using Zink instead for OpenGL via this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation. The motivating factor for this latest Mesa work is for using Zink atop the NVK Vulkan driver for newer NVIDIA GPUs...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Zink-NVK-For-NVIDIA-OpenGL

[mrg666]

This is so nice to see happening. I hope all other drivers converge on Zink and OpenGL becomes just a higher level API over Vulkan.

[arabek]

Same should happen to OpenCL tbh

[-MacNuke-]

Same should happen to OpenCL tbh

Check out rusticl

[user1]

This is so nice to see happening. I hope all other drivers converge on Zink and OpenGL becomes just a higher level API over Vulkan.

I hope not. There's no reason to phase out already performant and mature drivers like RadeonSi.

[-MacNuke-]

I hope not. There's no reason to phase out already performant and mature drivers like RadeonSi.

It will happen eventually. The need for performant OpenGL drivers is declining and maintainers might stop caring for it when there is a solution that is performant enough. Even Microsoft started to implement older DirectX versions on top of DirectX 12.

[mrg666]

I hope not. There's no reason to phase out already performant and mature drivers like RadeonSi.

What I love about open source is that progress cannot be hindered by narrow minds. RadeonSi is yours to stay, so don't worry. Its maturity will become stale and then, rotten in time. Glad that progress is happening while that happens. This is an excellent reason for me.

[jeisom]

I hope not. There's no reason to phase out already performant and mature drivers like RadeonSi.

Future AMD gpus could very well just use zink. Then they can just focus on implementing the Vulkan side which would mean less developer time and maintenance effort. Most future development on performance critical software is going to be Vulkan/D12/metal anyway, so most OpenGL software will be plenty performant.

[user1]

-MacNuke- mrg666 jeisom

It will happen eventually. The need for performant OpenGL drivers is declining and maintainers might stop caring for it when there is a solution that is performant enough. Even Microsoft started to implement older DirectX versions on top of DirectX 12.

What I love about open source is that progress cannot be hindered by narrow minds. RadeonSi is yours to stay, so don't worry. Its maturity will become stale and then, rotten in time. Glad that progress is happening while that happens. This is an excellent reason for me.

Future AMD gpus could very well just use zink. Then they can just focus on implementing the Vulkan side which would mean less developer time and maintenance effort. Most future development on performance critical software is going to be Vulkan/D12/metal anyway, so most OpenGL software will be plenty performant.

Ok, but are you all aware that in case of AMD Mesa drivers, RadeonSi is officially developed by AMD, while RADV (the Vulkan driver) is developed mostly by Valve and is not even officially supported by AMD?

AFAIK, RADV / ACO devs still sometimes need to rely on the work being done in RadeonSi / LLVM. For example, since RADV is not an official AMD driver, RADV devs don't have access to early new hardware documentation, unlike RadeonSi / LLVM devs. That's why they need to rely on RadeonSi / LLVM in these cases.

So given these circumstances, lets say we phase out RadeonSi. Then what will RADV devs rely on?

[-MacNuke-]

Then what will RADV devs rely on?

AMDVLK.

And have you checked out the (AMD) driver quality for older D3D versions on Windows? It is a real shit show. And nobody said that we should remove radeonsi from Mesa right now. It is just a matter of time until maintainers will stop caring. No matter if they work at Valve, RedHat, AMD or are indepdendant.

It is not that somebody asks to remove it. It will just bitrot over time.