You Can Help Bring Vulkan Support To Older AMD GCN GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: You Can Help Bring Vulkan Support To Older AMD GCN GPUs

Earlier today I wrote about how AMD will only be supporting Vulkan with the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver and not the more common Radeon DRM kernel driver. Here's a few more points to clarify the situation...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-GCN-To-AMDGPU

[brent]

AMDGPU already supports CIK GPUs. It seems quite logical and low effort to make that support official to help Vulkan support. With CIK+VI supported, most recent GPUs will work.

Of course I don't know what AMD is planning, though.

[smitty3268]

They're still trying to get amdgpu up to speed right now - power management is still disabled, hardware reset isn't in yet, etc.

Hopefully once they've got VI parts actually working, they can focus on porting GCN 1.0 and 1.1 - although I guess that depends on how Polaris support is going. I think i'd rather have them focus on getting Polaris supported first since older GCN cards already have existing support and there aren't any real Vulkan apps yet anyway.

[humbug]

Really hope AMDGPU quickly gets offical support for all GCN hardware. I know AMD is capable of pulling it off but of course it's a question of whether it gets prioritized amongst the limited manpower / resources of the Linux driver team. I spent a lot of money on an R9 290 and I really hope I don't have to go to windows to access vulkan applications.

For years now AMD users on Linux have had to settle for very slow openGL performance despite knowing that their GPU hardware was capable of so much more (as could be proven by using other operating systems / APIs). There was never any openGL driver which did justice to the capabilities of the hardware. This has got especially bad of late with most AAA-linux game devs saying that they do not support AMD GPUs. In 2014 came the promise of Vulkan, a fresh-start, better conformance, multi-threading, simpler drivers and with it the chance to get AMD back into a competitive position vs Nvidia in Linux games. So supporting AMDGPU + Vulkan on all GCN hardware means a lot not just for users but also for game devs who will be able to target Vulkan with the reassurance that all GCN hardware is supported. Vulkan API is supposed to be a unifying force, not a divisive one. Not to mention that earlier GCN GPUs are still on sale with cards like the R9 390 / 390x or recently discontinued R9 2xx series.

So come on AMD! Reward our faith as longtime consumers and give us AMDGPU and with it Vulkan + fast performance on Linux at last! For AMD more than anybody else the opportunity to lessen the focus on openGL as quickly as possible should be seen as an opportunity.

(Only made this post because I understand that the decision has not yet been made on whether to support GCN1.0 and 1.1 with AMDGPU)

[finalzone]

Dual Radeon is awaiting i.e. R5 M230+R7 M265 from Kaveri APU powered laptop.

[Dukenukemx]

Why not just take the Vulkan and add it to radeonsi and R600?

[eydee]

In the meantime, Vulkan is already running great on Geforce MX440.

[oleid]

In the meantime, Vulkan is already running great on Geforce MX440.

Unless there is another round of depreciation on the nvidia Vulkan release

[entropy]

Tbh, as a 7950 user I'm mostly disappointed by the apparent chaos when it comes to decision making at AMD. :/

[Mike Frett]

Anyone know the lowest end or least expensive GPU that would support Vulkan?