Khronos Group Announces Vulkan, OpenCL 2.1, SPIR-V

[BeardedGNUFreak]

Hilarious!

The moronic little 15 year Linux dunces are wetting their panties over AMD dumping their failed Mantle garbage on the Khronos clowns.

[computerquip]

Hilarious!

The moronic little 15 year Linux dunces are wetting their panties over AMD dumping their failed Mantle garbage on the Khronos clowns.

I hate to do this but this guy is clearly malicious, regardless of his opinion. Why can he not be removed from the forums?

[Luke_Wolf]

I hate to do this but this guy is clearly malicious, regardless of his opinion. Why can he not be removed from the forums?

Because he hasn't trolled hard and long enough for someone to make a ban thread for us to petition his removal yet.

There's only a few ways to get banned here.
1). You spam
2). You post porn
3). you piss off the forum community enough that we call for you to be banned

[CrystalGamma]

it will be used for PC games, but mobile games certainly not within the next 5 years.

What makes you think this? If the next Android version includes Vulkan, there will probably be phone games in little more than two years.

[Jeff Rigby]

Could SPIR-V be the intermediate language mentioned in the Sony 2 GPU patent?

Large GPUs in SoCs and APUs, especially AMD's GCN GPUs draw too much idle current even at Zero clock to be used with Power Modes like IPTV/XTV. The Sony 2 GPU patent and the slide in the 2010 Leaked Xbox 720 power point disclose a low power smaller GPU and larger high power GPU and the switching between them.

Sony second GPU patent. Mentioned in the leaked Xbox 720 powerpoint and in a Microsoft 2 GPU patent as well as letters to the EU power board.

HSAIL covers choosing the best CPU for the job (Compute which can also use a GPU) and I assume there is some way to power on and off as well as scale clocks as needed. But HSAIL doesn't address graphics...is Vulcan-SPIR-V the HSAIL for Vulcan/OpenGL

[smitty3268]

Could SPIR-V be the intermediate language mentioned in the Sony 2 GPU patent?

It could be a potential implementation of such an intermediate language.

Generally speaking, in patents, when something isn't explicitly specified it is done that way by design - so that the patent covers all possibilities rather than narrowing it down to a single implementation.

Hardware independent intermediate languages are hardly a new concept. TGSI has been doing the same thing in Mesa for years, and if you look at other projects i'm sure you could go back decades, at least. Direct3D bytecode is another graphics related one that's been around for quite a while.

Certainly SPIR-V is one language you could attempt to use in creating an implementation of the design in that patent, though.

[Jeff Rigby]

It could be a potential implementation of such an intermediate language.

Generally speaking, in patents, when something isn't explicitly specified it is done that way by design - so that the patent covers all possibilities rather than narrowing it down to a single implementation.

Hardware independent intermediate languages are hardly a new concept. TGSI has been doing the same thing in Mesa for years, and if you look at other projects i'm sure you could go back decades, at least. Direct3D bytecode is another graphics related one that's been around for quite a while.

Certainly SPIR-V is one language you could attempt to use in creating an implementation of the design in that patent, though.

Thank you for your reply. AMD and Sony are actively involved with and use Khronos standards and power gating/clock scaling for the two GPUs has to also be managed at the same time similar to how HSAIL is also going to manage power and clock. Microsoft's C++ AMP to target Khronos SPIR and HSAIL

C++ AMP becomes the high level language with multiple underlying implementations including DirectCompute, Khronos SPIR 1.2 for OpenCL and HSAIL.

which seems to imply that SPIR will be the GPU Compute and maybe graphics part of HSAIL which it does not currently support.

I'm not a professional in this industry but I see the issues the multiple 2 GPU patents are trying to address. AMD APUs and SoCs can not become more powerful without addressing OS support for a low power and high power GPU. The XB1 and PS4 as the first Game consoles with AMD APUs and large GPUs chose different hardware designs to address this issue. About 2016 with HBM solving memory bandwidth and power, something has to be implemented to address this issue in AMD SoCs with large GPUs.