Open Source Could Help Bring Vulkan To More AMD GPUs (phoronix.com) 38
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has confirmed that their Vulkan Linux driver will only work with the new AMDGPU kernel driver, meaning that for right now on the desktop, Vulkan will just work on the Radeon R9 285, R9 380, R9 380X and R9 Fury series — not even the other Rx 200/300 series graphics cards. This limitation exists because the AMDGPU driver only works with GCN 1.2 and newer. In time, AMD may allow the driver to work on older GCN GPUs going back to the HD 7000 series. But wait: AMDGPU is open-source. AMD is welcoming community support to help bring AMDGPU (and thereby Vulkan) to these older GPUs. The work involved would be porting GCN 1.0/1.1 support from the existing open-source Radeon DRM driver over to the new AMDGPU DRM driver. The Vulkan code itself is said to already be compatible with all GCN GPUs going back to the HD 7xxx series.
Plan to OpenSource (Score:2)
The long term plan of AMD for Vulkan is to open it.
Vulkan is very low-level, there isn't that much room left for some "secret sauce" or other IP that needs to be protected.
In Vulkan world (and DX12), the kind of magic that went into OpenGL and DirectX now goes directly into the 3D Engine.
On Linux, Vulkan is very much comparable to the various "back-end" used by the Galium3D stack above which the Mesa openGL-state-tracker runs.
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It seems Vulkan brings back the concept of classic "Display Lists" as "Command buffers" but with the option of editing them and not simply having to redefine an entire mesh simply because one bone moved due to dynamics.
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Or is it still freedom disrespecting software?
Vulkan isn't software at all, it is a specification.
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It's the age of software fast food. Agile developers write expendable software for disposable hardware. Pay a buck for an app with as much staying power as a wheat foam hamburger. What's your franchise? Apple or Google? Do you want a SIM with that?
AGP (Score:3)
Doesn't support R9 GPU from last year...
On Linux, AMD has recently started a new generation of kernel module (a new one which is unified for both the opensource Gallium stack and its Mesa3D opengl AND the proprietary Catalyst OpenGL).
Only the recent hardware has its drivers developed for this new module.
BUT there are no technological limitation preventing Vulkan on older hardware.
Thus:
- Vulkan could be ported to the older modules.
- OR a thin "Vulkan"-to-"Gallium back-end" wrapper could be written (quite possible given that both are on the very lo
... but it probably won't (Score:2)
n/c
GCN and HSA (Score:1)
I wonder what GCN 1.1 is missing that makes it make sense for GCN1.2+ to use a different driver, the only feature I know of is preemptive multitasking on the GPU, which is presumably useful for multiple HSA applications?
My Kaveri is sad now.
Re:GCN and HSA (Score:5, Informative)
GCN 1.1 is missing nothing, so tell your Kaveri to be happy.
We already have upstream support for KV and the other GCN 1.1 parts in amdgpu, it's just not enabled by default yet, and can't be until the userspace has been available long enough to make sure we can cut over without new kernel builds breaking existing systems:
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/Kconfig
The only question that's not fully settled is what we do for SI - extend the libdrm-amdgpu userspace library to use radeon kernel driver IOCTLs, or port the SI code from the radeon kernel driver to the amdgpu kernel driver. We have been looking at both options in parallel with developing the Vulkan userspace.
Re: GCN and HSA (Score:1)
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A little late but I'm a bit slow as I've been pretty damned ill for like a week now. Suffice to say, I'm a pretty loyal AMD buyer. Thanks. I will, once in a while, buy something Intel but not often. I also hate phones and tablets so I don't spend much there.
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https://www.khronos.org/vulkan
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GCN 1.1 support in amdgpu is disabled by default at the moment because that hardware is already supported by radeon and changing the default right now will break user systems. We need to wait until userspace code with the ability to work over either driver makes its way out to most of the user systems (which means going t
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https://twitter.com/grahamsellers/status/688126936648790016
The only issue under discussion is that we are in the middle of a Linux kernel driver transition (moving from the closed-source Vulkan driver and open source radeon driver to a new amdgpu kernel driver) and the question we haven't answered yet (very few announcements are happening until the Vulkan embargo NDA lifts) is which kernel drive
R9 290 (Score:2)
Since the R9 380 is essentially the R9 290 rebranded I guess it works with that gpu too?
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R9 390 and R9 290 are both based on Hawaii, while R9 380 and R9 285 are both based on Tonga.
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ah, oops. When I typed R9 380 above there I was thinking of the R9 390 which is the R9 290 rebranded.
Like the AC this news makes me sad because the R9 380 isn't in the list so we have to hope the community will help give it support.
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Not sure where the idea about community porting GCN 1.1 came from, that code has been upstream for months. The only question is GCN 1.0 since we haven't finalized whether to support that with amdgpu or radeon, so in the meantime people are writing "OMG what if they never support it ?" stories to get traffic.
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This news beats what I assumed till now : that the amdgpu driver is ONLY for the newest GPUs.
We have it much better now but the question is then of timing, i.e. will you get support in time for Ubuntu 16.04? Or perhaps, Ubuntu 16.04.1 (maybe Mint 18.1).
At least they didn't announce support for GCN 1.0/1.1 many monthes ago, leading to more waiting frustration but it seems like this takes ages and no public hard schedule dates could be given. That makes AMD seem fairly understaffed (though the linux kernel ha
Who chose the names DRM and GCN? (Score:2)
The work involved would be porting GCN 1.0/1.1 support from the existing open-source Radeon DRM driver over to the new AMDGPU DRM driver.
Who chose the name "Direct Rendering Manager" in the first place? Was it created before or after "Digital Rights Management"?
And who chose the name "Graphics Core Next"? That was certainly years after the GameCube console was officially abbreviated GCN. Incidentally AMD bought the company (ATI) that bought the company (ArtX) that developed the Flipper GPU in the GameCube.
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