Mozilla's GFX-RS 0.8 Released For Vulkan Portability - Brings Big Changes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mozilla's GFX-RS 0.8 Released For Vulkan Portability - Brings Big Changes

Following the recent layoffs at Mozilla and some projects seemingly at risk moving forward, one that we have been worried about is GFX-RS as the interesting Rust-based library implementing the Vulkan Portability Initiative using GFX-HAL...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GFX-RS-0.8-Released

[kvark]

This is a pre-release, as we are trying to migrate to Github Actions now, and we need a few iterations before we can get the release packaging working. So sorry about broken links until we get out of pre-release and make it a real one! Edit: now it's done for real - https://github.com/gfx-rs/portability/releases/tag/0.8

Also, this isn't "Mozilla's" - it's a Rust community project. Edit: And the release is for "gfx-portability" specifically, which is a Vulkan C API wrapper around gfx-rs (release is not for gfx-rs itself, which is a Rust API).

[nokipaike]

so soon will we have firefox on top vulkan or is my imagination running too fast?

[kvark]

so soon will we have firefox on top vulkan or is my imagination running too fast?

We had it running on Vulkan (as well as Metal and D3D12) for a while in an experimental branch. However, the last 20% of distance (to take it to production) take 80% of effort, and this is where Mozilla financial health kicked in. I don't know if we'll find resources to finish the port and ship it.

[bug77]

so soon will we have firefox on top vulkan or is my imagination running too fast?

Moving over to Vulkan stuff that doesn't need Vulkan is not something to look forward too. It increases the application's code complexity, because some stuff that OpenGL handled in the driver is now on the application to manage.

[wswartzendruber]

Moving over to Vulkan stuff that doesn't need Vulkan is not something to look forward too. It increases the application's code complexity, because some stuff that OpenGL handled in the driver is now on the application to manage.

If it's Vulkan, then Firefox should be able to issue rendering calls in parallel.

Also, this isn't "Mozilla's" - it's a Rust community project. Edit: And the release is for "gfx-portability" specifically, which is a Vulkan C API wrapper around gfx-rs (release is not for gfx-rs itself, which is a Rust API).

That appears to be true. If it were Mozilla, it would be under the MPL-2.0 license, I think.

[nokipaike]

just out of curiosity, Firefox on Zink (which is a very soon wrapper OpenGL 4.6 to Vulkan) do you think it has some performance advantage?

i guess a real port of firefox to Vulkan has real advantages by exploiting code optimizations otherwise not possible on OpenGL.

[oleid]

I would be surprised if ffx on zink would be any faster. As the existing drivers are quite optimized. Firefox on gfx-rs is a whole different story. It is a thin wrapper above Vulkan or DirectX 12 and thus should yield performance improvements, if the port is good.

[bug77]

just out of curiosity, Firefox on Zink (which is a very soon wrapper OpenGL 4.6 to Vulkan) do you think it has some performance advantage?

i guess a real port of firefox to Vulkan has real advantages by exploiting code optimizations otherwise not possible on OpenGL.

What code optimizations? Do you see Firefox lagging because of 3D operations?
Firefox makes light use of 3D rendering, the underlying API is not a bottleneck.

[nokipaike]

What code optimizations? Do you see Firefox lagging because of 3D operations?
Firefox makes light use of 3D rendering, the underlying API is not a bottleneck.

do not be aggressive, they were just questions for curiosity, in the hypothesis comparing native opengl and zink, and also a reasoning that a real advantage in vulkan (exploiting the architectural advantages) requires code written on purpose to use them.