Valve Hires X11 Veteran Keith Packard To Work On The Linux Display Stack

[pal666]

The shader cache isn't "only a workaround". If you want fast loading times there is no way around shader cache.

of course there is. don't close app ffs

[geearf]

Well, you definitely want an in-memory one to avoid recompiling shaders. The on-disk one is more debatable

Right, the on-disk one is definitely less useful once you have the in-memory one, but both are still great to have. And yet they still don't solve the problem though
Actually the on-disk one potentially makes it worse on the first compilation, which may or may not be troublesome.

[tegs]

While its great that there's momentum for these things, the sad reality is that Ubuntu, the most popular distro, will sit on an old release for years. Just shows how archaic the "stable" mentality is for desktops. For the server packages, I do see a reason.

[nanonyme]

There is another way: faster compilation of shaders.
Also again, this whole loading time is only about games that compile shaders on loading, which is not all them.
Also you'll lose your cache on new mesa or llvm release (or just a rebuild by your distribution as long as the magic number is a timestamp), so then a faster compiler would be nice.

The shader cache is good, but if shader compilation was fast enough we wouldn't care for it, hence I call that a workaround.
By that I don't mean that it is bad or should be removed eventually, but it doesn't really solve the problem either.

Well, you definitely want an in-memory one to avoid recompiling shaders. The on-disk one is more debatable

[geearf]

The shader cache isn't "only a workaround". If you want fast loading times there is no way around shader cache. Also Valve wants to ship pre-compiled shaders in the future (tarceri mentioned it the other day on #radeon). So the shader cache is here to stay and that's good!

There is another way: faster compilation of shaders.
Also again, this whole loading time is only about games that compile shaders on loading, which is not all them.
Also you'll lose your cache on new mesa or llvm release (or just a rebuild by your distribution as long as the magic number is a timestamp), so then a faster compiler would be nice.

The shader cache is good, but if shader compilation was fast enough we wouldn't care for it, hence I call that a workaround.
By that I don't mean that it is bad or should be removed eventually, but it doesn't really solve the problem either.

[Klassic Six]

Great news, good luck with your new job Keith.

[roothorick]

i think that means that either valve is committed to linux, or the steambox project is still going strong, despite appearing a bit stagnant.

i personally feel it's the latter, linux improvements just happen to be a nice side effect of their effort.

Little of A, little of B. Valve wants to minimize their dependence on MS software/products as much as they can and both help in different ways.

[lumks]

In the long run I hope that SteamOS will be Wayland based. With Keith on board this should be possible!

[faph]

Well yes, shader cache is only a workaround (a nice one but still).

The shader cache isn't "only a workaround". If you want fast loading times there is no way around shader cache. Also Valve wants to ship pre-compiled shaders in the future (tarceri mentioned it the other day on #radeon). So the shader cache is here to stay and that's good!

[dungeon]

Ah, good luck at Valve Keith.