Intel ANV Vulkan Driver Now Supports External Semaphores

Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver has picked up support for the VK_KHR_external_semaphore extensions.

VK_KHR_external_semaphore, VK_KHR_external_semaphore_capabilities, and VK_KHR_external_semaphore_fd are now supported by the Intel ANV Vulkan driver on Mesa 17.3-dev Git. The extensions are used for synchronizing access to external memory via semaphores.

There have been patches for this extension available via the mailing list for a few weeks while overnight the code was merged. This external semaphores support is built off the Direct Rendering Manager's synchronization object API that was added to the Linux kernel with this current v4.13 cycle.

Thus the code going in first over night was Intel's sync object support for Mesa followed by the various works prepping for the VK_KHR_external_semaphore handling and then flipping it on.

RADV and ANV previously supported the experimental VK_KHX_external_semaphore extensions while what's supported today is the "KHR" (Khronos) ratified version of external semaphores. That KHX to KHR changeover for semaphores happened with Vulkan 1.0.54.