Qualcomm Open-Source Vulkan Driver Aims To Run More Windows Games Via Wine / Proton

At this past weekend's FOSDEM 2022 virtual event, a status update was provided on Mesa's "TURNIP" Vulkan open-source driver that provides accelerated support for Qualcomm Adreno graphics.

TURNIP, which started out as a Vulkan driver project along similar lines (and for the most part, the same developers) as the "Freedreno" reverse-engineered Gallium3D driver for Adreno graphics, is maturing nicely. Hyunjun Ko of Igalia covered the TURNIP progress made over the past year. Many Vulkan extensions were implemented with this reverse-engineered, open-source Qualcomm Vulkan driver. In addition to the numerous prominent extensions added, there were important fixes too that ultimately made TURNIP a conformant Vulkan 1.1 driver for Adreno 618 class GPUs.

When paired with the likes of FEX-Emu and Box86, this Mesa Vulkan driver last year began running Windows games thanks to DXVK/VKD3D for mapping Direct3D over Vulkan and then FEX/Box86 handling the x86/x86_64 to Arm translation.

This year the TURNIP developers intend to focus on getting more Windows games running on the driver via Proton / Wine. Plus the never-ending performance optimization work in general.

TURNIP developers are also looking forward to the Adreno 700 series GPUs with new capabilities like ray-tracing and mesh shaders.

The slide deck and video recording for the FOSDEM 2022 TURNIP presentation can be found over on FOSDEM.org.