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Google's VirtIO-GPU "Venus" Vulkan Driver Merged Into Mesa 21.1

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  • Google's VirtIO-GPU "Venus" Vulkan Driver Merged Into Mesa 21.1

    Phoronix: Google's VirtIO-GPU "Venus" Vulkan Driver Merged Into Mesa 21.1

    It was just a few days ago was the talking of the VirtIO-GPU Vulkan driver looking to be upstreamed into Mesa and now this Google "Venus" project has indeed landed...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    It’s wonderful to see the progress being made on this driver. Keep up the great work, Chia-I Wu!

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    • #3
      i wonder if this is something they use for stadia.

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      • #4
        Probably to give chromeos linux vms vulkan support much like what they do with virgl now.

        Using this with the other google sponsored project, Zink, will mean most arm boxes will get opengl > 2.1.

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        • #5
          ... Hopefully, in the long run this will save the need for GPU device pass-through and give near-native OpenGL and Vulkan process minus the head-ace.

          Note: Typing this on a Fedora 33 VM, running with GPU, USB and Audio pass-through running under oVirt.

          - Gilboa
          oVirt-HV1: Intel S2600C0, 2xE5-2658V2, 128GB, 8x2TB, 4x480GB SSD, GTX1080 (to-VM), Dell U3219Q, U2415, U2412M.
          oVirt-HV2: Intel S2400GP2, 2xE5-2448L, 120GB, 8x2TB, 4x480GB SSD, GTX730 (to-VM).
          oVirt-HV3: Gigabyte B85M-HD3, E3-1245V3, 32GB, 4x1TB, 2x480GB SSD, GTX980 (to-VM).
          Devel-2: Asus H110M-K, i5-6500, 16GB, 3x1TB + 128GB-SSD, F33.

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          • #6
            Awesome news! Does that mean we can get proper DirectX acceleration, provided that it's possible to run DXVK natively on Windows?

            Sidenote: I'd love to get D3D9 acceleration using something like this and Mesa's D3D9 state tracker on the host. XP and DirectX 9 is all the Windows I'll ever need

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            • #7
              Originally posted by trilean View Post
              Awesome news! Does that mean we can get proper DirectX acceleration, provided that it's possible to run DXVK natively on Windows?
              This seems to be for Linux guest, not Windows.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by trilean View Post
                Awesome news! Does that mean we can get proper DirectX acceleration, provided that it's possible to run DXVK natively on Windows?

                Sidenote: I'd love to get D3D9 acceleration using something like this and Mesa's D3D9 state tracker on the host. XP and DirectX 9 is all the Windows I'll ever need
                No. There isn't currently any working VirtIO-GPU driver for Windows. There was some experimental driver but it is abandoned now. VirtIO-GPU is currently is not very usable outside Linux guests.

                Even if somebody will develop such driver (I hope this will happen) it will probably only support WDDM on Windows 10.
                Last edited by dragon321; 09 April 2021, 02:06 PM.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by geearf View Post

                  This seems to be for Linux guest, not Windows.
                  Once the infrastructure is stable, is there anything stopping it from being used on Windows? Creating a Windows Vulkan Driver that takes advantage of this would serioulsy bring virtualization costs in the enterprise down by being able to bypass the Nvidia tax for sharing GPUs for multiple Virtual Machines. I can definately see some company noticing this and spending some cash to hit that last mile.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by dragorth View Post

                    Once the infrastructure is stable, is there anything stopping it from being used on Windows? Creating a Windows Vulkan Driver that takes advantage of this would serioulsy bring virtualization costs in the enterprise down by being able to bypass the Nvidia tax for sharing GPUs for multiple Virtual Machines. I can definately see some company noticing this and spending some cash to hit that last mile.
                    Originally posted by trilean View Post
                    Awesome news! Does that mean we can get proper DirectX acceleration, provided that it's possible to run DXVK natively on Windows?

                    Sidenote: I'd love to get D3D9 acceleration using something like this and Mesa's D3D9 state tracker on the host. XP and DirectX 9 is all the Windows I'll ever need
                    In therory Yes it is possible, and I'd go so far as to argue maybe even likely. as I've said in another thread, while a Virgl GPU driver for windows is possible, there is no real reason to do so. Directx to OpenGL, quite frankly, kinda dookie. add that to the performance overhead of VirGL before and you have a recipe for disaster. the performance would be so bad, there would be no reason to even attempt it to any large degree. nobody would really benefit from it, except for people who NEED windows testing environment for an OpenGL accelerated app, and for some absolutely need more performance than existing virtual gpus, but not enough to warrant passing through even a $40 gpu from some used parts store. In other words, very little amount of people would get any use aside from people who like to tinker.

                    Vulkan very much changes this, We are already seeing performance benefits verse openGL in terms of overhead, (I believe an early report said 75% of baremetal performance which is a massive amount). Now there is real incentive. while it may sound like a massive preformance hit. it will still mean a locked 60FPS and more on most games depending on host GPU. pair this with the relatively low overhead with translation layers such as DXVK and VKD3D, and now we are seeing real benefit.

                    For instance this will allow running many accelerated VMs off of a single GPU partition. making it great for smaller but necessary tasks. Another instance is Multi-headed virtual machine setups. Take a library for instance, you could run multiple nodes with nothing more then a good USB hub and an rx580 (not that they are cheap at the moment...). This also greatly benefits cloud "gaming" services. Right now cloud gaming is done by taking, likely a NVIDIA Tesla card. partitioning it and passing through the partitions to virtual machines.

                    With this however you could better segregate your "Tiers" Partitioned GPUs could be reserved for "high end" gaming stations. you don't need a beefy GPU to play old games. multiple instances of games like witcher 1 and 2, Dota, League of legends and other low spec and/or older games could comfortably run on a card like an RTX 2080 or a RX 5700. (assuming the Host driver scheduling can do this without major incident).

                    In short, This is actually REAL incentive to get there to work on windows now, when there never was before, HOWEVER Just because their is incentive, doesn't mean it will be worth while. You still need to hire developers to work on this, unless someone want's to in their spare time. and being blunt, it can be much cheaper to do a one or two time payment of a couple of thousands of dollars than hiring a competent developer, or group of developers to work full time on it.

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