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AMD's Vulkan Driver Will Only Work With The AMDGPU Kernel Driver

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  • AMD's Vulkan Driver Will Only Work With The AMDGPU Kernel Driver

    Phoronix: AMD's Vulkan Driver Will Only Work With The AMDGPU Kernel Driver

    I've just received confirmation from AMD that their forthcoming Vulkan driver will only work with the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver. This means that unless this AMDGPU kernel driver is extended to support pre-VI hardware, only the very latest AMD GPUs on Linux will work with Khronos' next-generation API...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Seems a pretty bad news.

    This is a clear message to game devs 'you need to support gl if you want Linux customers'... Thus slowing down Vulkan adoption significantly...

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    • #3
      I'd really like to hear some propaganda convincing us that this is wonderful and "moving the entire industry forward" from the same people who just viciously attacked Nvidia merely for having one of their developers talk about Vulkan support.

      A little more seriously, it was clear that AMD was never going to support Vulkan on anything other than GCN, but hopefully they work on getting this new driver model operational for a wider range of GCN hardware.

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      • #4
        I'm not sure how you talked to, but this is all still under heavy discussion internally. No final decisions have been made. The vulkan Linux driver was brought up on the amdgpu stack, perhaps that was what your source meant.

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        • #5
          So, if you want Vulkan on linux, you need to buy a new GPU, even if yours is a 6 month old 400$ one. It's just very bad for customers.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by chuckula View Post
            A little more seriously, it was clear that AMD was never going to support Vulkan on anything other than GCN, but hopefully they work on getting this new driver model operational for a wider range of GCN hardware.
            Vulkan requires some hardware features that are only on GCN hardware (GPUVM, memory based resource descriptors, independent compute queues, etc.).

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            • #7
              As much as I hate to admit it, it seems like this is another NVidia moment. NVidia's proprietary stack is supposed to support Vulkan by leveraging the same things that their stack uses internally to do OpenGL. Meaning that for AMD the GCN 1.2 and higher is a great way forward, but the rest is basically status-quo of use NVidia on Linux for gaming.

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              • #8
                Well it's going to take a while but when Vulkan is public.. that's when things get interesting.
                Besides, what's the rush of using Vulkan NOW NOW, it's going to take a while before it's going to be used (in Linux and Windows).

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by agd5f View Post

                  Vulkan requires some hardware features that are only on GCN hardware (GPUVM, memory based resource descriptors, independent compute queues, etc.).
                  Radeon HD 7000 series were the first GCN, though, right? So, as far as hardware is concerned, they, and the complete R9 200 series could run Vulkan, right?
                  Then, no, AMD has no excuse to support a wider range of GPU's than this sounds like. Gogo RadeonSI stack!
                  Although I've been considering replacing my HD 7850 with one of them Polaris cards..

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                  • #10
                    Sorry, but this makes sense. Game developers are freed up to target newer to newest hardware thus not handcapping them.

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