Happy Holidays: AMD Finally Pushing Out Open-Source Vulkan Driver

[artivision]

Personally i think that the big subject here are those mysterious LLVM patches, that i'm very interested on them. It supposed that LLVM wasn't ready for shaders and that is why we need NIR. Maybe it's time for OGL and other state trackers to target LLVM directly now, of course they will still need to submit Gallium or Vulkan commands (i prefer Vulkan with a SPIR-V bypass extension).

[vortex]

Perhaps the worst part of this is, that all the people crying for open-sourced drivers will now show their gratitude by still buying nvidia products.

[shmerl]

Perhaps the worst part of this is, that all the people crying for open-sourced drivers will now show their gratitude by still buying nvidia products.

AMD usage is rising (click trends there): https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics#trends

[donbastiano]

Very very nice, congratulations to AMD! I don't understand all the criticism, I still think that having two open source driver in good/decent shape is good and it is better that having zero or one closed. I don't think it was remotely possible to have only one project, the AMD was born before but it was not ready to open, it has something in common with the Windows version and I don't think is a simple process to open it. The RADV was and remains amazing.

[Luke_Wolf]

Finally...

bridgman From a strategic standpoint it would make sense to also open up the windows parts of the vulkan driver so that game devs can fix problems in the driver on their side and improve performance on their side (like Feral has done with RADV) rather than having to make a Linux port to do so. I know it's a big jump from having things open source for Linux to having them also open source on Windows, but the advantages of doing so would give AMD a much needed edge in the market. I think it's worth you poking management about even if you don't reply to this post.

[bridgman]

bridgman From a strategic standpoint it would make sense to also open up the windows parts of the vulkan driver so that game devs can fix problems in the driver on their side and improve performance on their side (like Feral has done with RADV) rather than having to make a Linux port to do so. I know it's a big jump from having things open source for Linux to having them also open source on Windows, but the advantages of doing so would give AMD a much needed edge in the market. I think it's worth you poking management about even if you don't reply to this post.

It does get discussed from time to time, but so far the conclusion has been that for Windows the competitive advantages of closed source outweigh the efficiency benefits of giving app developers zero-effort access to source code.

I say "efficiency" and "zero effort" because the alternative to open source is exposing source code under NDA or having AMD engineers (with access to driver source they can inspect, modify and build) working closely with the app developers.

[artivision]

It does get discussed from time to time, but so far the conclusion has been that for Windows the competitive advantages of closed source outweigh the efficiency benefits of giving app developers zero-effort access to source code.

I say "efficiency" and "zero effort" because the alternative to open source is exposing source code under NDA or having AMD engineers (with access to driver source they can inspect, modify and build) working closely with the app developers.

Depending how you see it. For example you have taken for granted that Amd engineers 'must' building it for Windows.

[Tomin]

Depending how you see it. For example you have taken for granted that Amd engineers 'must' building it for Windows.

I think he might have meant that there must be someone from AMD to look after the other people, so that no Windows code is copied. Probably something to do with some NDA or other agreement they've made with Microsoft.

[dimko]

бунт на корабле, блядей за борт!!!
excellent news... So my dream of getting properly working Open Source driver is getting close to reality.

[Luke_Wolf]

It does get discussed from time to time, but so far the conclusion has been that for Windows the competitive advantages of closed source outweigh the efficiency benefits of giving app developers zero-effort access to source code.

I say "efficiency" and "zero effort" because the alternative to open source is exposing source code under NDA or having AMD engineers (with access to driver source they can inspect, modify and build) working closely with the app developers.

Well I mean, the thing is you're already opening up the bulk of your Vulkan code, and as soon as it finally drops they can have that zero effort access... if they're targeting Linux. I'm not saying "Open the whole catalyst driver" or anything like that, just open the windows side of the driver enough that game devs can improve and replace the vulkan implementation on their own machines, and send AMD their changes. I kinda doubt that there's much in the way of proprietary secret sauce in the code gluing Vulkan into the Windows driver. I'm sure there's plenty I don't know going into this but strategically it seems like all the valuable stuff related to Vulkan is already set to be opened, and putting proprietary hoops in the way of the Windows game devs may be the status quo but is pointlessly limiting potential development of the driver.