How Open-Source Allowed Valve To Implement VULKAN Much Faster On The Source 2 Engine

[CrystalGamma]

I really wish that SPIR-V would replace NIR, TGSI and probably LLVM IR, it would allow mesa to use work done to improve it and be friendlier to devs that have only to learn SPIR-V not some niche languages(devs that are willing to hack on mesa)

Probably not NIR, it is a in-memory format and does not have a serialization (AFAIK), which is all that SPIR-V is. It will, for most purposes, be the format that SPIR-V is parsed to.
TGSI could very well be replaced, given that it served a similar purpose anyway. LLVM, I can't say.

[valeriodean]

To be honest, I'm more interested to read news about AMDGPU kernel driver than other. Shouldn't it be ready to show itself in the LKML for the end of 2014 - first month 2015? What's the progress actually?
Thanks.

[sobkas]

As far as I know, no. It's completely standalone from Mesa in terms of its code-base with not much (any?) common code at scale.



Not really, it's a driver taking SPIR-V and turning it into Intel's machine code. Radeon and Nouveau are vastly different architectures, plus Radeon (presumably) would probably end up just using the SPIR-V to LLVM pass for then emitting their instructions given the stage and quality of their LLVM back-end.

I really wish that SPIR-V would replace NIR, TGSI and probably LLVM IR, it would allow mesa to use work done to improve it and be friendlier to devs that have only to learn SPIR-V not some niche languages(devs that are willing to hack on mesa)

[curaga]

What a letdown. Michael, your tease promised something more, this was Captain Obvious-tier news.

[dungeon]

I'm not sure if those numbers mean that people in China are actually buying 75% of what we make (which seems unlikely), or just reflects the fact that pretty much every company in the world manufactures in China these days.

I would want to see a by-country or by-region breakdown of channel sales (as opposed to OEM sales) before drawing any conclusions.

Blah you seems to like to avoid to make conclusions, but you can't be wrong on this one even your CEOs always talking about desktop chanell is heavely concentrated in China

[Ancurio]

mesa is still using an openGL version released over 5 years ago, at this rate we won't see Vulkan until the mid 2020s.

OpenGL is a giant beast, and every version requires all the previous ones. Vulkan in comparison is rather slender and has none of that baggage. Just look at LunarG, a (small) independent group of developers unaffiliated with Intel was able to write an alpha driver for their hardware within a couple months.

[peppercats]

To be clear, you don't know whether they have or not. The only thing you know for sure is that they haven't released any support for Mantle on Linux. It should also be noted that NO vendor has released Vulkan drivers, as Vulkan's spec has not been nailed down. So, docking AMD for that is rather heavy handed.

Now, AMD has working drivers for Mantle on Windows. This code should be able to transition relatively easily to become Vulkan. Putting AMD in the position of having the most tested driver for working games in the market. They promised Linux drivers when Mantle was released. So, internally they were working on it. I don't know why they didn't release it, and I won't speculate. They did release Mantle as an open spec, in the form of Vulkan, so they made good on that promise. There would be no Vulkan this fast without the work AMD did on Mantle.

We can speculate that they will have well implemented drivers for Vulkan on day one, at least in Beta, thanks to their leg up on their already existing work. We will see if that is the case when Vulkan is released.

mesa is still using an openGL version released over 5 years ago, at this rate we won't see Vulkan until the mid 2020s.

[dragorth]

In this context, "hasn't released a single line of code for their Linux OSS driver" refers to Mantle/Vulkan.
The radeon driver devs have done a great job with their driver, but looks to me as if AMD itself didn't care much. If they really cared, they could have developed Mantle in Linux, and they have not done so.
I imagine Valve could be selling AMD hardware with Mantle/Vulkan-enabled games already. Instead, Valve chose to invest in the Intel driver. *That* is a missed business opportunity.
BTW, all the radeon devs read (and sometimes reply to posts in) phoronix... but they are not AMD, they are individual employees. AMD is a big organization just like every other company, and I doubt their Linux devs have too much influence.
I hope I'm wrong, though. I wish we could be seeing Vulkan being implemented by these devs in the next months...

To be clear, you don't know whether they have or not. The only thing you know for sure is that they haven't released any support for Mantle on Linux. It should also be noted that NO vendor has released Vulkan drivers, as Vulkan's spec has not been nailed down. So, docking AMD for that is rather heavy handed.

Now, AMD has working drivers for Mantle on Windows. This code should be able to transition relatively easily to become Vulkan. Putting AMD in the position of having the most tested driver for working games in the market. They promised Linux drivers when Mantle was released. So, internally they were working on it. I don't know why they didn't release it, and I won't speculate. They did release Mantle as an open spec, in the form of Vulkan, so they made good on that promise. There would be no Vulkan this fast without the work AMD did on Mantle.

We can speculate that they will have well implemented drivers for Vulkan on day one, at least in Beta, thanks to their leg up on their already existing work. We will see if that is the case when Vulkan is released.

[bridgman]

I'm not sure if those numbers mean that people in China are actually buying 75% of what we make (which seems unlikely), or just reflects the fact that pretty much every company in the world manufactures in China these days.

I would want to see a by-country or by-region breakdown of channel sales (as opposed to OEM sales) before drawing any conclusions.

[dungeon]

Its more: Because there is no other 3D API ...

Yup OpenGL is everywhere even on his Mac , unforgettable XP in China, etc... all those talking in ears a little bit of western audience That is a point, western audience asking about even here, but it is a little point and not mainly about them, because business is elsewhere and many people even here fails to understand that

https://youtu.be/45O7WTc6k2Y?t=1m30s

Ask Bridgman is it true that 75% revenues coming from China, of course it is true. And is also true chinesses 99.9% running Windows, even linux on web servers is not used there well nearly at all, etc