RADV Wires Up VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer, VKD3D-Proton Usage Pending

Introduced last week as part of Vulkan 1.3.235 was the new VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer extension. NVIDIA issued a same-day Vulkan beta with support for this new capability while now the open-source Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has added support for it too and there is also VKD3D-Proton usage for this new extension pending.

The VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer extension lays out new commands for putting shader-accessible descriptors directly in memory. VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer was worked on by engineers from Valve, AMD, NVIDIA, Arm, and Intel for more effective and explicit management of descriptor data. Among the Valve folks involved have been Mike Blumenkrantz, Connor Abbott, Hans-Kristian Arntzen, and Baldur Karlsson.

To no surprise given Valve's heavy involvement with the extension, there is a pull request pending for VKD3D-Proton to begin making use of VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer. This is just one of now many Vulkan extensions influenced by Valve for helping with their DXVK and VKD3D-Proton efforts for efficiently mapping Direct3D APIs atop the Vulkan API.

The RADV support for this extension was merged today for Mesa 23.0 due out next quarter.

There is also a TURNIP MR pending for that open-source Qualcomm Adreno Vulkan driver while presumably Intel will be working on VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer soon for their ANV Vulkan driver.