Nouveau Now Implements Two More GL4 Extensions, Very Close To OpenGL 4.2

[bridgman]

I think that's the most common view. There's also a "Vulkan isn't that different from Gallium3D so maybe it's time to update the Gallium3D API" view. It's probably safe to say that none of the initial Vulkan drivers will be using Gallium3D though.

[duby229]

I thought we already established that Vulkan won't be a part of Mesa and won't run on top of/through Gallium. It's at a lower level, so it will interface directly with the kernel DRM drivers. At least, that was my understanding of the recent discussion.

Yep, that is exactly what has been said over and over again. I've even read it would be easier to get mesa to run on top of a Vulkan implementation than it would be to get a Vulkan implementation to run on top of mesa.

[Azpegath]

Cool! But there's one thing I don't get: Noveau got started years after the foss radeon drivers and Noveau hasn't got official support from Nvidia (even though they don't oppose its development), so how can the Noveau drivers have passed radeon? The amd drivers even have internal manpower from AMD?! Plus all the docs are made public.

I'm an avid AMD supporter, thanks to their FOSS support, but I'm confused by the above.

[Guest]

Plus all the docs are made public.

Those GPU docs are harder to read than Intel/AMD CPU documentation. The additional complexity contributes to lower adoption of low-level GPU programming.

[Azpegath]

Those GPU docs are harder to read than Intel/AMD CPU documentation. The additional complexity contributes to lower adoption of low-level GPU programming.

I understand that, but it still doesn't answer the actual question. How is it possible for Noveau developers to backwards engineer faster than payed AMD developers plus community with help of advanced docs?

[bridgman]

I think the quick answer is that Nouveau is not ahead except in the specific area of GL extensions, where the devs are doing a fantastic job. In the really nasty and time-consuming areas like power management I think it's fair to say that the radeon/amdgpu drivers are well ahead. Probably same goes for stability etc... but that is harder to measure.

The problem is that we have pretty charts for comparing GL extension support and no charts for comparing anything else, so it's easy to think the only metric that matters is GL support.

[Azpegath]

I think the quick answer is that Nouveau is not ahead except in the specific area of GL extensions, where the devs are doing a fantastic job. In the really time-consuming areas like power management I think it's fair to say that the radeon/amdgpu drivers are well ahead. Probably same goes for stability etc... but that is harder to measure.

The problem is that we have pretty charts for comparing GL extension support and no charts for comparing anything else, so it's easy to think the only metric that matters is GL support.

Thanks, of course you are correct. I guess I got a bit of tunnel vision focusing only on extensions!