Intel Lands More Open-Source Vulkan Driver Changes For Ray-Tracing

Even though Vulkan ray-tracing support on Intel graphics hardware isn't coming until Xe HPG avaiability, Intel's Linux graphics driver developers have been preparing since last year. In preparation for the Xe HPG launch, Intel's open-source talent have for many months already been preparing the Vulkan ray-tracing functionality wither another batch of code being merged today.

Last year Intel began with the compiler-side work around ray-tracing and that has continued with other ray-tracing related prerequisites for their "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver.

Merged today is the support now for actually being able to compile ray-tracing pipelines and the ability to then dispatch them.

There still are open TODO items for Intel's Vulkan ray-tracing support with this open-source Linux driver but they are certainly making nice progress and good to see it landing still ahead of launch. Latest unconfirmed rumors put the initial Xe HPG hardware at having up to 512 EUs but the higher-end SKUs reportedly not launching until 2022.

This latest batch of Intel ANV work will be found in next quarter's Mesa 21.2 release. Separately, Mesa's RADV Vulkan driver has begun landing its ray-tracing changes too for that next Mesa3D update.