Microsoft's "Dzn" Vulkan-On-D3D12 Adds Working Pipeline Cache

The Microsoft Dozen "Dzn" code within Mesa that allows for the Vulkan API to be implemented atop Direct3D 12 for benefit on Windows now has a working pipeline cache implementation.

Microsoft along with collaborators at Collabora have been working on advancing the Dozen code for supporting Vulkan API usage in more cases under Windows where ultimately it's running atop Direct3D 12. Currently Dozen is capable of roughly Vulkan 1.1 support and continues working out other features along a similar trajectory to Microsoft's efforts too for OpenCL and OpenGL atop Direct3D interfaces.

The latest Dozen feature work is Boris Brezillon of Collabora adding a "real" pipeline cache. To now Dozen has featured just a dummy implementation while now there is Vulkan pipeline and shader caching support. This in turn can help load times and other software for leveraging the cache on subsequent loads.

The Mesa Dzn code now supports caching of NIR shaders, DXIL shaders, and pipeline caching. This real pipeline cache was merged yesterday to Git for next quarter's Mesa 22.2 release as another Windows enhancement.