Blumenkrantz Back To Working On Zink Improvements For 2023

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Blumenkrantz Back To Working On Zink Improvements For 2023

After enjoying a two month holiday, Valve-funded Mike Blumenkrantz is back to working on Mesa's Zink code that implements OpenGL (and via Clover even OpenCL) atop the Vulkan API. Zink has shown it can be quite competitive in its OpenGL performance atop Vulkan compared to dedicated OpenGL drivers and in 2023 should be maturing into even better shape...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Blumenkrantz-Zink-2023

[timofonic]

2024: Zink is 309% faster than native OpenGL implementation.

[pdbecid]

Zink could mean the future for Desktop Linux: have everything on the desktop (UI, Video, 3D) be rendered using Vulkan and have Zink to fallback on legacy code intended for OpenGL. This way new systems (i.e. QT6, GTK5) can use Vulkan natively while not having to deal with refactoring old code. Kind of like XWayland works.

[brauliobo]

Michael benchmarks please!

[Developer12]

Mesa's Zink code that implements OpenGL (and via Clover even OpenCL)

You'd think Michael could remember the difference between Clover and rusticl.

[Michael]

You'd think Michael could remember the difference between Clover and rusticl.

Just a typo when writing this at ~4am when not having enough coffee yet...

[ehansin]

Zink could mean the future for Desktop Linux: have everything on the desktop (UI, Video, 3D) be rendered using Vulkan and have Zink to fallback on legacy code intended for OpenGL. This way new systems (i.e. QT6, GTK5) can use Vulkan natively while not having to deal with refactoring old code. Kind of like XWayland works.

Yep, was thinking the same comparison at the end, after you brought up the idea. Zink becomes the Xwayland of transition to a more pure Vulkan world. Someone with more know-how than myself can chime if ia "pure" Vulkan world is a good idea, but from my reading here, I see the benefits of all this.

[geearf]

Yep, was thinking the same comparison at the end, after you brought up the idea. Zink becomes the Xwayland of transition to a more pure Vulkan world. Someone with more know-how than myself can chime if ia "pure" Vulkan world is a good idea, but from my reading here, I see the benefits of all this.

What about the GPUs that don't support Vulkan?

[Quackdoc]

ill be swapping to zink as much as possible soon on my desktop, don't do much in the way of heavy gaming, but I am interested in the PVR stuff, so any thing I can do to test I just might do

[mdedetrich]

What about the GPUs that don't support Vulkan?

Well they can always use OpenGL then, I mean older GPU's do have OpenGL support because that is what was mainly used when they were created and this will likely not be removed. Pretty much every new mainstream GPU will have Vulkan support so thats going to be a non issue.

You also have to look at what happened in the Windows landscape, for example Direct3D has been removed and/or replaced with a software renderer which means a few older games either don't work or are very slow. There are however open source/community made Direct3D drivers which are implemented with newer API's (i.e. DirectX/Vulkan) and since we are dealing with Windows you can just place the dll of the new driver in the root game directory and it will automatically be picked up (I have been doing this with Red Alert 2)