AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 Brings Mesh Shaders, Several New Vulkan Extensions

AMD has published AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 as their first official open-source Vulkan driver update for the quarter that for Linux users serves as an alternative to the Mesa RADV driver or the code bundled up into their Radeon Software packaged driver.

With AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 there are several new Vulkan extensions supported and other enhancements with this being their first open-source Vulkan driver update since the middle of March.

New extensions found with AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 include VK_KHR_map_memory2, VK_EXT_image_sliced_view_of_3d, VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state, VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state3, VK_EXT_shader_module_identifier, VK_EXT_mesh_shader, VK_EXT_pipeline_library_group_handles, and VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer. Overall a nice set of updates, especially with now having mesh shader support and some of the other extensions also being useful for Steam Play with DXVK / VKD3D-Proton.

Radeon GPUs have supported mesh shading functionality since the RDNA2 / Navi 2 GPUs and the RADV driver has already exposed VK_EXT_mesh_shader while it's nice that AMDVLK has finally joined the party. The formal Vulkan extension for mesh shaders was published last September.

In addition to the handful of new Vulkan extensions, AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 also now supports Navi 3x GPUs' new floating point instructions. The Vulkan API headers have also been updated against the v1.3.246 release.

Rounding out this release are a few bug fixes for Vulkan CTS failures and other issues being sorted out. The AMDVLK 2023.Q2.1 source code as well as Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux binaries can be found on GitHub.