Google's SwiftShader Now Supports Vulkan 1.1

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google's SwiftShader Now Supports Vulkan 1.1

SwiftShader. Google's CPU-based implementation that originally was focused on OpenGL ES and Direct3D 9, now has Vulkan 1.1 support in tow...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SwiftShader-Vulkan-1.1

[andrei_me]

So this would work as vulkan CPU driver like kazan?

[programmerjake]

So this would work as vulkan CPU driver like kazan?

yes, though kazan will also end up supporting HW acceleration features for libre-riscv's GPU, and they will have different performance characteristics.

[tildearrow]

Is it possible to merge SwiftShader (and maybe Kazan) with Mesa for software Vulkan rendering

[programmerjake]

Is it possible to merge SwiftShader (and maybe Kazan) with Mesa for software Vulkan rendering

It's technically possible but both SwiftShader and Kazan have licenses that Mesa may not like (since Mesa also provides the graphics drivers for the BSDs): Apache 2.0 and LGPL2.1+ respectively.

There would also be the issue that there is very little shared code, so there may not be much point.

[Shnatsel]

It would be interesting to see some benchmarks of their Vulkan implementation. Especially since there's not much in the way of Vulkan software implementations right now.

[cute2dgirl]

SwiftShader is not very useful on desktop platforms right now. No BC texture compression is probably the biggest blocker, but there are others, almost none of the optional device features are supported, so nothing except a few simple demos will run.

Edit: Even vkcube and the Sascha Willems demos don't work because they require XCB surface support. This thing only supports xlib.

[kpedersen]

SwiftShader is not very useful on desktop platforms right now.

We used to use it at work to make our build system cater for stupid things like Unity that required a GPU to make builds back in the day.
Our (correct) fix was luckily to rid ourselves of toys like Unity but it probably still works for older software or to make them play nice in a VM or Wine.
Both newer Blender (2.8) and UE4 over consume GPU requirements these days so might not work however.

[headlessclayton]

> This thing only supports xlib.

Just a heads-up that xcb support was added this week.