Khronos Clarifies That Vulkan Multi-GPU Isn't Limited To Windows 10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Khronos Clarifies That Vulkan Multi-GPU Isn't Limited To Windows 10

With the big Vulkan 1.0.42 update came a number of new extensions, including for Vulkan multi-GPU/device support. There was some confusion by some that Vulkan's multi-GPU support was limited to Windows 10, but that is not at all the case...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vulkan-Multi-GPU-Everywhere

[microcode]

How did people get that impression?

[pcxmac]

I think I saw something on youtube (could have been Linus Tech Tips) about WDDM/Win10 multi-gpu, and the inference of it being windows 10 exclusive. Microsoft won't want it getting down to Win7 owners though, pretty sure they will find a way to keep that from happening.

[Guest]

Wonderful, so developers can choose to use LDA and lock Vulkan to Windows 10? That can only end well

[Sonadow]

considering how multi-gpu is as good as broken on anything that is not Windows, it might as well just be Windows-exclusive.

[illwieckz]

considering how multi-gpu is as good as broken on anything that is not Windows, it might as well just be Windows-exclusive.

Do you have something to share about Vulkan multi-GPU experience? I mean, not about OpenGL/DirectX multi-GPU with Catalyst on RadeonHD experience (or similar obsolete tech from Nvidia's side) that is irrelevant there.

[indepe]

Wonderful, so developers can choose to use LDA and lock Vulkan to Windows 10? That can only end well

No, even the clarifications are a bit confusing. LDA does not lock into Windows 10, it is also available on W7 and W8 (as is WDDM).

As far as I understand the only real thing is that on Windows, WDDM is necessary. But not on Linux (where that doesn't exist).

[humbug]

I think I saw something on youtube (could have been Linus Tech Tips) about WDDM/Win10 multi-gpu, and the inference of it being windows 10 exclusive. Microsoft won't want it getting down to Win7 owners though, pretty sure they will find a way to keep that from happening.

thing is unlike Apple with Mac OSX, Microsoft does not exert tight control over what IHVs choose to do using their graphics drivers. That's the reason we even have Vulkan working on 3 different versions of windows (win7, win8, win10), because AMD, Intel and Nvidia chose to ship drivers and get it working. Similarly if they decide they want to get Vulkan multigpu working on win7 nobody will stop them from implementing that feature in their driver.

[Sidicas]

The developer still needs to enable multigpu for it to work. So long as this is a required action by the developer and not an automatic feature provided for all games, it is no better than SLI/Crossfire and the games I have been playing recently on both Windows and Linux aren't enabled for SLI/Crossfire and Vulcan isn't providing a solution to that, which is disappointing.

[duby229]

The developer still needs to enable multigpu for it to work. So long as this is a required action by the developer and not an automatic feature provided for all games, it is no better than SLI/Crossfire and the games I have been playing recently on both Windows and Linux aren't enabled for SLI/Crossfire and Vulcan isn't providing a solution to that, which is disappointing.

Initially I thought very similar, but now I've changed my mind after reading more about it. It seems like the way loads are spread across GPU's is very dependant on load. There is no possible way to make a generic method. It must be done at the game engine level because that is where information about the load is.