Intel Vulkan Driver Lands Descriptor Buffer Support To Reduce Linux Gaming CPU Overhead

The VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer extension was made public in November 2022 with Vulkan 1.3.235 while finally this past week Intel's open-source Mesa "ANV" driver has merged support for this extension. This Vulkan extension is important for Linux gaming and other scenarios to lower CPU overhead.

Within days of the extension appearing the RADV driver patches surfaced too with VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer used by VKD3D-Proton. VKD3D-Proton has used it since its v2.8 release for removing "a ton of CPU overhead". Zink also allows using the extension for reducing CPU overhead. VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer allows putting shader-accessible descriptors directly in memory to make descriptor data more explicit.

Since March 2023 has been this merge request for adding VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer support to ANV. Finally merged last week for next quarter's Mesa 24.1 is the support for this extension. This has been successfully tested on DG2/Alchemist Arc Graphics, Tigerlake, Icelake, and Gen9 graphics hardware. It's another step forward -- but arguably long overdue -- for Intel's Arc Graphics Linux gaming prospects.