Vulkan 1.0 Released: What You Need To Know About This Cross-Platform, High-Performance Graphics API

[eidolon]

My guess however is that if Nvidia is supporting XP now, they likely still have a strong incentive to support the platform, whereas AMD on the other hand, may look at their marketshare demographics, and may have already lost the XP user market long ago, and feel they will not get it back prior to those users upgrading to Win7 or later.

I suspect that support for XP has been reduced to a bare minimum or is the process of being reduced to a bare minimum (if not eliminated) by most companies.

[azari]

I'm going to have to chalk this up to a difference of interpretation then. I don't consider the slides damning or demonstrably indicative. Perhaps I'm jaded by US politics. [...]

I think that's possible; you appear to be reading the slides the way a lawyer would, but what I'm saying is that the vast majority of people do not read them that way, and when considering what is "reasonable" or "unreasonable", I think it's only fair to consider what a normal human understanding would be. It's not like the idea of XP/Vista support is a complete fantasy, a casual reading of the slides does give the impression it will be supported, and it's only when you switch on the legalese/politics filter in your brain that you realize otherwise.

Keep in mind that I've already mentioned the likely possibility that the companies are being intentionally misleading, which if you are indeed jaded by politics, you know is extremely likely. In other words, they probably know full well that people will misread the slides, and thus it should come as no surprise that people are falling into this trap.

Would you find that to be a compelling reason to support Vulkan on XP if you were in the position to make the call?

I'd have to see the numbers to guess, as well as the effort/workhours required; on the Linux side of things, a Vulkan driver is more or less just a new userspace component, sort of like a lower-level gallium with a stable ABI. I'm not familiar with WinXP's driver architecture, but if all they have to do is add the new userspace component to the already-existing (in Nvidia's case) XP drivers, then it may end up being fairly easy.

It really depends on the specifics of the market; we know there's more XP users than Linux users but we don't know how often these people buy new hardware, or so on, so without AMD and Nvidia's private sales data, it wouldn't be possible for me to give a precise answer to your question. My guess however is that if Nvidia is supporting XP now, they likely still have a strong incentive to support the platform, whereas AMD on the other hand, may look at their marketshare demographics, and may have already lost the XP user market long ago, and feel they will not get it back prior to those users upgrading to Win7 or later.

[eidolon]

In any case, my point wasn't that XP/Vista support was "likely", just that given those slides, it was not an unreasonable expectation.

I'm going to have to chalk this up to a difference of interpretation then. I don't consider the slides damning or demonstrably indicative. Perhaps I'm jaded by US politics. If/when AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA make promissory commitments to supporting Vulkan on XP, then I will expect such support (and even then they could fail to deliver). Until then, I have no such expectation, nor should anyone else realistically. If you think people reasonably could/should have said expectation based on those slides alone, then we will have to agree to disagree.

Perhaps Vulkan support makes its way to XP and Vista, it's certainly not impossible, but I'll believe it when incontrovertible, objective proof to that end presents itself.

XP still seems to have more than double Linux's marketshare in the Steam hardware/software survey... There is a PR/marketing case to be made, that supporting the few stubborn users that refuse to upgrade could foster some brand loyalty, or perhaps even establish some street cred for Vulkan.

Would you find that to be a compelling reason to support Vulkan on XP if you were in the position to make the call?

[pal666]

If they don't have the option, then you are absolutely right.

of course they don't, they are unable to upgrade from dead unsupported os

[eidolon]

my point was that xp users are not going to buy vulkan-supported card and vulkan-supporting game

If they don't have the option, then you are absolutely right.

[pal666]

I would refer you to the second paragraph of the post you quoted from. And nobody with Windows currently needs Vulkan, though that doesn't mean it is unwelcome there.

my point was that xp users are not going to buy vulkan-supported card and vulkan-supporting game

[azari]

Considering the bigger picture, barring explicit confirmation, there was no concrete reason to believe that XP and Vista support would be fulfilled.

If you were to take the slides alone at face value, the evidence for XP support and Linux support are pretty much the same; in fact, in the Nvidia slides, the only platform that has a caveat of "as determined by supplier" is Android. I go back to my previous assertion, either they are explicitly being misleading for PR reasons, or they may be serious about some form of XP/Vista support at some point.

This Nvidia slide is even more damning I'd say, because it's not like the Vulkan slide which can be interpreted as a more general statement from the Khronos group, this is Nvidia themselves saying that XP/Vista support is something people could expect, and they are one of the three desktop GPU companies; are we expected to believe that the slide is suggesting "well, maybe AMD and Intel will support XP and Vista, but not us"?

In any case, my point wasn't that XP/Vista support was "likely", just that given those slides, it was not an unreasonable expectation.

What's NVIDIA's (or AMD's) compelling business case for XP Vulkan support?

XP still seems to have more than double Linux's marketshare in the Steam hardware/software survey, although I don't know what kind of GPUs those users have. There is a PR/marketing case to be made, that supporting the few stubborn users that refuse to upgrade could foster some brand loyalty, or perhaps even establish some street cred for Vulkan. Nvidia certainly seems to think that supporting XP for certain GPUs makes sense.

[timofonic]

It would imply that the open-source community need to have access to GPU hardware as it develops. As far as I know, such a transformation in companies like NVidia or AMD hasn't been ever tried yet. It is unverified whether such an open GPU development strategy works or doesn't work, is profitable or isn't profitable, has definite advantages over closed GPU development or hasn't.

It would be nice if anybody could play with a GPU emulator before the actual GPU hardware is released. Maybe this is something that is bound to happen in the long-term future, because the open-source drivers might be ready when the GPU is released, or even better the drivers might be ready before the GPU hardware is released.

On the other hand, the above paragraphs might just be pure fantasy.

Of course not going to happen, but that fantasy is the utopia for the users!


X86 has been a headache for Intel, but no more as their competitors are now totally behind them:


- Their only actual real competitor is AMD. AMD has been exponentially losing both technical progress and market, with financing and resource issues everywhere. Their 64bits miracle was just that, then Intel put their big machine to win the market.

- VIA is a big industry joke these days: The release of the driver for their useless outdated GPU is funnier than Duke Nukem FOREVER one, that ended in a crappy and outdated product.



I see no much change in GPU world:

- NVIDIA: They dominate the GPU market, the competition lags behind in both market share and support. They don't want to give more cake to their competitors, strategically they would prefer to still be sided to Microsoft instead.

- AMD: Catalyst is a big joke. I'm not sure if AMDGPU is going to change this. Their GPU technology is considerably slower than NVIDIA and their poor drivers make it undesired for PC gamers too.

- Intel: They dominate the market of GPUs for non-demanding users (commodity PCs) that are into the CPU for those. Those demanding GPU power go to Intel+NVIDIA solution.



We are still in "The Matrix", with a fake alternative just like in the movie

[eidolon]

...the very AnandTech article you linked shows a slide from the PDF that was released on the 16th which shows "Windows XP" as a platform that Vulkan will work on.

It was presented as that Vulkan could run on XP and Vista (e.g. page 6 of http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/sig...rs-Daniell.pdf), not that it would be implemented on XP and Vista. Technical feasibility doesn't promise actual implementation. For example, EA can support Linux (granted, EA employees likely don't state this in industry or otherwise public presentations so as to avoid crossed signals), but that doesn't mean that EA will support Linux. Considering the bigger picture, barring explicit confirmation, there was no concrete reason to believe that XP and Vista support would be fulfilled.

...even the most generous interpretation of that slide would suggest that Khronos' intentions are precisely to mislead people into thinking that Vulkan support on XP will in fact materialize.

I took it at face value to mean that it is technically possible, not that there was known, documented commitment to actual support.

It's worth noting that as of 2016, Nvidia still appears to be releasing drivers for XP for certain GPUs even in the GTX 9xx range...

Yes, both the GeForce GTX 960 & 950 are supported for XP.

...so who knows.

What's NVIDIA's (or AMD's) compelling business case for XP Vulkan support?

...most people migrating from XP are switching to a modern Windows version and therefore giving Microsoft more money, rather than switching to Linux, as I'm sure most of us would prefer. =p

Purely speculation on my part, but I expect that most Windows 7 & 8.1 home users who are aware of Vulkan will have upgraded their Windows installations to Windows 10 by the end of the "free" upgrade period (July 2016?).

[azari]

My point in my original post was that whether in articles such as http://www.anandtech.com/show/10035/vulkan-10-released that suggest that Vulkan support for XP would be coming from some yet-to-be-named source, or a number of overzealous comments such as https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comm...leased/d024ig1, Windows XP (and Vista) support was never really in the pipeline. This particular differentiator isn't a differentiator as it is unrealized, and of all the talking points that separate Vulkan from DirectX 12, it was an unnecessary one, and it never should have been raised in the first place as there was no credible reason to believe it would materialize.

I must take issue with the notion that there was "no credible reason to believe it would materialize"; the very AnandTech article you linked shows a slide from the PDF that was released on the 16th which shows "Windows XP" as a platform that Vulkan will work on. The Khronos members surely looked over this PDF and agreed to publish it as-is.

Now we can argue that it was wishful thinking to think they would deliver on that, or that their intent is for that slide to act as a form of PR, to make it look like more OS versions are supported than in reality, or that the intent is to communicate "potential support" as opposed to "actual support", but you can't just say that it's completely unreasonable that someone would get the wrong impression from that slide, in fact, even the most generous interpretation of that slide would suggest that Khronos' intentions are precisely to mislead people into thinking that Vulkan support on XP will in fact materialize.

It's worth noting that as of 2016, Nvidia still appears to be releasing drivers for XP for certain GPUs even in the GTX 9xx range, so who knows. Personally I think XP should probably be dropped since it's no longer getting security updates, although on the other hand, most people migrating from XP are switching to a modern Windows version and therefore giving Microsoft more money, rather than switching to Linux, as I'm sure most of us would prefer. =p