More NIR Optimizations En Route, "Soft FP64" Still Being Worked On

[phoronix]

Phoronix: More NIR Optimizations En Route, "Soft FP64" Still Being Worked On

When it comes to letdowns for Mesa in 2018, sadly OpenGL 4.6 support didn't reach mainline. Another unfortunate feature not making it into the Mesa 18.x release series is the "soft FP64" support to allow some older GPUs to work with OpenGL 4.x. While we haven't seen any new soft FP64 patches in a while, not all hope is lost...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Soft-FP64-NIR-Optimizations

[M@yeulC]

users are likely abandoning

I think you accidentally

(you might want to end your sentence with something like... "these ageing GPUs and moving on to more modern equivalents with hardware FP64 support)

[Michael]

I think you accidentally

(you might want to end your sentence with something like... "these ageing GPUs and moving on to more modern equivalents with hardware FP64 support)

Yeah thanks, was there originally but looks like it got chopped off accidentally while typing. Fixed now.

[TumultuousUnicorn]

As time presses on though, users are likely abandoning these older GPUs in favor of newer parts.

Yup. Vulkan is not supported for pre-GCN GPUs. Sure, it's time to upgrade.

[nuetzel]

Yup. Vulkan is not supported for pre-GCN GPUs. Sure, it's time to upgrade.

Which laptop owners can't do (so easy)...

[TumultuousUnicorn]

Which laptop owners can't do (so easy)...

GCN was launched in 2011. Who wants to play Vulkan-based games on a 7+ years old laptop?

[nuetzel]

GCN was launched in 2011. Who wants to play Vulkan-based games on a 7+ years old laptop?

Read the headline. This article is about OpenGL. You point to Vulkan.

[ms178]

*Raising my hands here* - I am still using a 6770M on my laptop, and just checked that Metro 2033 using Steam Proton works pretty decent like other non-demanding strategy games (at least with KDE, I had quite some trouble with GNOME and derivatives like Budgie showing nothing but the mouse pointer and a black screen). So there are still some users out there who benefit from this work.

[ms178]

By the way, the desktop experience is way better on Linux than on Windows nowadays with that particular laptop model. Due to issues with the ultra low power state and old drivers, it takes ages to boot on Windows and if I disable it, the laptop is not that useful in mobile environments any more. It also helps that I can compile my own Kernel with very aggressive compiler flags and a custom config to bring some noticeable speed improvements to that old diva.

[grok]

GCN was launched in 2011. Who wants to play Vulkan-based games on a 7+ years old laptop?

Actually desktop users can be likely to own a Radeon 5450 as it was still being sold recently enough. Radeon 6450 still is sold as well as R5 230 its renamed part. Why? AMD doesn't have a low end GCN card and isn't likely to ever have one and the closest one R7 240 isn't properly supported by amdgpu yet [edit : looks like it isn't sold anymore but 6450 is]. Other lines of pre-GCN GPUs are those built into APU such as A10 5800K, A6 6400K, A8 6600K and such. AMD E350 and derivatives are more likely on laptops but were still a thing on ITX (C-60).

Despite AMD abandoning them (on Windows) it's APUs sold in 2014, graphics cards sold in 2016.