Lavapipe Continues Advancing CPU-Based Vulkan - Now Supports Transform Feedback

Lavapipe (nee Vallium) continues picking up more functionality for this software-based Vulkan implementation just as LLVMpipe is to OpenGL.

Lavapipe debuted in Mesa 20.3 and has continued progressing with its Vulkan capabilities for this CPU-based driver. The Lavapipe work continues to be primarily spearheaded by Red Hat's David Airlie who is quite prolific in the open-source graphics driver area.

The latest feature work of Lavapipe being merged into Mesa 21.0 is Vulkan Transform Feedback (VK_EXT_transform_feedback) support. This merge request was honored tonight for landing the Lavapipe transform feedback implementation. Like with the rest of the Lavapipe code, LLVMpipe is also leveraged in part for providing this transform feedback functionality.

The Vulkan Transform Feedback extension was introduced two years ago for helping the likes of DXVK / VKD3D and other graphics API porting efforts atop Vulkan.

This month Lavapipe has also seen other Vulkan extensions enabled like KHR_descriptor_update_template, KHR_push_descriptor, EXT_shader_stencil_export, and other work. The Mesa 21.0 feature freeze won't start until the beginning of February so there is still plenty of time for additional Lavapipe functionality to land.