Mesa's Vulkan Software Implementation Now Known as Lavapipe

Mesa's Vulkan software implementation built atop LLVMpipe was developed as Vallium (Vulkan + Gallium3D) but has been renamed to Lavapipe within Mesa 20.3.

Vallium merged to mainline back in August for Mesa 20.3 as a still maturing Vulkan software implementation just like LLVMpipe is to OpenGL on CPUs. The name has always been a bit odd considering the similarities to Valium, a prescription drug for calming purposes around anxiety, muscle spasm, etc. But now ahead of the Mesa 20.3 stable release later this quarter this Vulkan software code has been renamed.

David Airlie has renamed Vallium to Lavapipe at the suggestion of AMD open-source developer Marek Olsak.

In the rename to Lavapipe it was described as "Just a cooler name, and a lot easier to search for."

Mesa 20.3 should be out around the end of November or more than likely will slip into December as the Q4'2020 open-source OpenGL/Vulkan driver stack update featuring this Lavapipe Vulkan implementation and many hardware driver improvements.