Steam Client Update Fixes Linux Shortcuts, Adds Vulkan Pre-Compiled Shaders

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Client Update Fixes Linux Shortcuts, Adds Vulkan Pre-Compiled Shaders

Five years and one day after Steam for Linux going public, there's a notable Steam client beta update coming down the wire...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-7-November-Useful-Update

[humbug]

The steam Vulkan shader caches work very well.

just tried it. R9 290. Previously I had to run the talos principle Vulkan benchmark twice to eliminate the first time stutters. Now it runs optimally right off the bat... Average fps gain on first time run was only 1-2 fps on the benchmark sequence but all the momentary stutters are now eliminated.

[bachchain]

automatically downloading pre-compiled GPU shaders for Vulkan games

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like way more effort to set up than it's worth.

[humbug]

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like way more effort to set up than it's worth.

More effort for who?

[bachchain]

More effort for who?

The guy who has to create and maintain the database of every shader for every game for every driver version for every GPU

[theghost]

Good job Valve, let's hope we finally get a fix for this weird login issue: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ste...ux/issues/5030

[-MacNuke-]

The guy who has to create and maintain the database of every shader for every game for every driver version for every GPU

Vulkans Shader binary is a standard "SPIR-V". I think they just pre-compile the shaders to spir-v using glslang. The optimization and translation to the GPU happens after that. Just the transition Source-Code -> SPIR-V is removed.

Otherwise this would be pretty much useless if you are not on SteamOS or something.

[yzsolt]

Vulkans Shader binary is a standard "SPIR-V". I think they just pre-compile the shaders to spir-v using glslang. The optimization and translation to the GPU happens after that. Just the transition Source-Code -> SPIR-V is removed.

Otherwise this would be pretty much useless if you are not on SteamOS or something.

I don't think so. The GLSL -> SPIR-V step must be done as a compile-time preprocess step by the developers, since Vulkan can consume SPIR-V only. bachchain is right, this is probably an assembly level binary shader cache. I'm wondering if this needs some level of support in the games (maybe there's a Steam API for this?), or Steam just looks for the binaries in some common folders.

[Masush5]

I don't think so. The GLSL -> SPIR-V step must be done as a compile-time preprocess step by the developers, since Vulkan can consume SPIR-V only. bachchain is right, this is probably an assembly level binary shader cache. I'm wondering if this needs some level of support in the games (maybe there's a Steam API for this?), or Steam just looks for the binaries in some common folders.

I don't think it requires support from the game, it uses Mesa's shader cache infrastructure.

[leonmaxx]

I don't think it requires support from the game, it uses Mesa's shader cache infrastructure.

Probably it uses a custom Vulkan layer - it doesn't require app support nor mesa or any other caches.