RADV Driver Enables Graphics Pipeline Library Support By Default

In time for the upcoming Mesa 23.1 branching and feature freeze, Samuel Pitoiset of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has enabled the graphics pipeline library "GPL" support by default with the Radeon RADV Vulkan driver.

For months Pitoiset and others on Valve's Linux team have been working on the RADV VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library support for improving the Linux gaming experience. Until today though it has required setting environment variables to activate while finally is now deemed good enough for enabling by default / out-of-the-box.

Vulkan 1.3.210 last year added VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library for allowing separate compilation of four distinct parts of graphics pipelines. By allowing independent parts of the graphics pipeline to be compiled into a graphics pipeline library that is then linked together at the final stage to create the executable pipeline, it allows for greater re-use for pipelines having the same shaders or states across multiple pipelines.

Last week GPL shader caching was added to RADV as the last missing feature before deeming this extension support good enough to enable by default. Now that it's ready, it should help with game load times and stutter avoidance.

So now the code is merged for Mesa 23.1 that should be out as stable in late May or early June.