AMDVLK Driver Updated With Environment Variable To Enable Experimental Extensions

AMD normally just does one code drop per week to their open-source "AMDVLK" Linux Vulkan driver code-base but now today marks the second time this week being greeted by new code. This latest release, v-2019.Q1.5, should provide for some fun weekend testing by Linux gamers preferring this driver over Mesa's RADV.

Earlier this week saw the AMDVLK 2019.Q1.4 build with Vega 20 support as well as Raven 2 support. There were also some DXX fixes/adjustments, more VK_EXT_transform_feedback code being merged, and other changes.

Hitting their source repositories today is already a 2019.Q1.5 build, including new Ubuntu/Debian packages. With today's driver update the Vulkan headers are updated against v1.1.97, there is proper handling for allocation failures, support for ECC GPR protection with Vega 20, a memory priority issue has been resolved, and a GFX7 fix around compute queues.

But most interesting with today's code drop is the AMDVLK_ENABLE_DEVELOPING_EXT environment variable. Now if AMDVLK_ENABLE_DEVELOPING_EXT is set, AMDVLK's experimental Vulkan extensions become available. Those currently experimental extensions include VK_EXT_debug_utils, VK_KHR_shader_float16_int8, and most notably... VK_EXT_transform_feedback! We've been seeing a lot of VK_EXT_transform_feedback work merged to AMDVLK in the past few code drops, but it didn't end up getting enabled. Now with this newest Vulkan driver code when paired with AMDVLK_ENABLE_DEVELOPING_EXT enabling should yield Vulkan transform feedback being enabled for helping out the likes of DXVK and VKD3D.

This new AMDVLK driver release can be fetched from GitHub.