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Valve Developed an Open-Source Intel Vulkan GPU Driver For Linux

Posted by timothy on from the good-news-for-a-change dept.

An anonymous reader writes For those wondering when the first graphics driver for the new Khronos Vulkan API will materialize and for what hardware, it looks like the first driver could very well be for Intel graphics and it might not be too far away. It turns out Valve developed an Intel Linux Vulkan driver to help ISVs bootstrap their new Vulkan code, with Valve planning to open-source this driver code. This is yet another reason to love Valve, especially as Intel graphics on Linux don't even support OpenGL 4 yet.

52 comments

  1. And we have a winner by CajunArson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Valve has officially won the Internet for like... at least a week.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:And we have a winner by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 1

      Good for them I guess since they last the internet just 2 weeks ago. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

    2. Re:And we have a winner by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oh look freetard rage

    3. Re:And we have a winner by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I'm sure all three people who use Vulkan are mighty pleased, especially the one who uses Vulkan and Linux.

    4. Re:And we have a winner by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 0

      Nah, for me it's not about any particular website being censored. I object to them fucking with the users' chat messages. I've paid for over a hundred games on Steam and I certainly know how to find torrents on my own without getting one of my Steam Friends to paste me a link. I just think it's idiotic for them to even bother trying to control what the users of their CDN talk about in "private" chat rooms to their friends. Can they? Obviously, they can. Doesn't mean I have to like it, or keep using their CDN. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods are all I really play anymore anyway, so it's no big loss to toss my Steam account.

  2. Names as Spock tribute ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2

    Is it named as a tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy ?

    1. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      No. It was decided way back, but the project name was publicly announced after he die. They know something we don't. I find that highly suspicious.

    2. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'd like to think so, but the fact that it comes from the "Khronos Group" which is a slant on the Klingon homeworld, it seems they were at least already in the Trek vein for their naming scheme.

    3. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No.

      a) Spelled differently
      b) Leonard Nimoy died a few days ago, this has been in the pipeline for months.

    4. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by jones_supa · · Score: 0

      I also noticed that in Reddit there is an user account called Leonard_Nimoys_Ghost which was created just couple of days before Nimoy died.

    5. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Informative

      Khronos is also a Greek deity representing time. Since Vulcan is also from mythology (although it is a Roman name instead of Greek), it doesn't mean that it's influenced by Trek.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    6. Re:Names as Spock tribute ? by Misagon · · Score: 1

      There has been some speculation that the name would have something to do with AMD. AMD has their own low(er)-level graphics API called Mantle, referring to the Earth's mantle. Vulkan is the work for volcano in some languages, and a volcano spews out magma from Earth's innards.

      When Vulkan became public, AMD announced right then that they are stopping development on Mantle to focus on Vulkan.
      It has been speculated that spurring the creation of Vulkan and the low-level API in DirectX 12 would have been AMDs intention with Mantle all along.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  3. Mod parent down. Stupid first post. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And this is a really good FR2FP!

  4. Past tense headline was weird by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    n/c

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Past tense headline was weird by antdude · · Score: 1

      Vulkan too. :P

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  5. Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Blaskowicz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This comes out as a very good point for using Vulkan (which I thought would be called something like OpenGL 5.0, but well)

    It's a nice suprise, though the downside may be the need for recent hardware. Article leaves out the minimum hardware feature level : is it restricted to Haswell and up? (that's the plan for DirectX 12). What is the status for Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and even Bay Trail Atom graphics : that is pretty important given the installed base.

    1. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My guess is that they didn't call it OpenGL 5.x because they wanted to totally break backwards compatibility and didn't want anyone to get confused.

    2. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      It's a nice suprise, though the downside may be the need for recent hardware. Article leaves out the minimum hardware feature level

      The official Vulkan page says that it will work on any platform that supports at least OpenGL ES 3.1. Of course another question is whether a Vulkan stack will actually be created for older hardware too.

    3. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by mczak · · Score: 1

      If it runs on Haswell, it should on Ivy Bridge and Bay Trail Atoms as well. Bay Trail Atoms and Ivy Bridge are of the same graphics generation (gen7), and Haswell is just minimally different (gen 7.5) sharing nearly all driver code. Sandy Bridge is definitely different, though since khronos is saying everything supporting GLES 3.1 and up should be able to support it (meaning even things such as geometry shaders have to be optional), I guess it should be good enough. I am not convinced though anyone is going to write a driver for it but who knows?

    4. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      As others have mentioned, the minimum requirement is OpenGL ES 3.1 - support. Others didn't say what that actually means in practice, so I'm jumping in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... lists the following sample of hardware that supports OpenGL ES 3.1:

      Adreno 400 series[25][26]
              Intel HD Graphics for Intel Atom Z3700 series (Android)
              Intel HD Graphics for Intel Celeron N and J series (Android)
              Intel HD Graphics for Intel Pentium N and J series (Android)
              Mali T6xx (midgard) series onwards[27] (Android, Linux)
              Nvidia GeForce 400 series onwards (Windows)
              Nvidia Tegra K1 (Android)
              Nvidia Tegra X1 (Android)
              PowerVR Series 6, 6XE, 6XT, 7XE and 7XT (Linux, Android)
              Vivante GC2000 series onwards (optional with GC800 and GC1000)[28]

      GeForce 400 is already 5 years old hardware, so as long as someone writes the drivers there's going to be a whole lot of supported hardware already out there and in active use. The list doesn't seem to mention AMD-hardware at all, but I would assume something similar as NVIDIA's 5 years.

    5. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Break backwards compat? They called that OpenGL 4.0 already anyway.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    6. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The hardware requirement has been announced as anything that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and up, although it's up to the manufacturer to write drivers for it.

      See here: https://www.khronos.org/vulkan
      "Will work on any platform that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and up"

    7. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenGL 4 maybe deprecated some things you shouldn't be using anyways, but that's about it. IIRC they didn't remove anything, so backwards compatibility is still there, and the API looks pretty much exactly how it did in 3.x, but with some extra extensions added on top. There was a lot of talk about it being a major overhaul, but nothing came of it. Presumably that's why they're using a new name this time, because otherwise we'd all just assume OpenGL 5 was another OpenGL 4.

    8. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Sudline · · Score: 1

      Or because they continue to support Open GL beside Vulkan.

    9. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      OpenGL 4 got a bunch of really major improvements, for example, direct state access in 4.5.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    10. Re:Easier to support than OpenGL 4.x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Officially, Kronos has said that any OpenGL ES 3.1 compatible chip could support Vulcan. On the OpenGL side, I have read on the oh so trustworthy internets 4.1 and above, but while watching the presentations from GDC conference, the spec authors have said that OpenGL min is still up in the air.

      It should also be noted that this driver is currently based off of a snapshot in time of an unfinished spec, and will need to be updated to comply with the final version.

      The good news is two separate arm chip groups implemented preliminary drivers, and both said it took them about 2 months to get an unoptimized working version of Vulkan. AMD should be able to use their work from Mantle, Intel has a preliminary driver thanks to LunarG and Valve, and ARM and Imagination Technologies were the two arm chip designers mentioned previously, which accounts for a majority of GPU being shipped today.

      Noticeably absent, Nvidia hasn't shown anything. Since the head of Khronos works for Nvidia, this could just be in consideration of the other partners, or they could just be waiting for the final spec. Considering they are trying to get into the mobile market, Vulcan should definitely be on their radar, though it could be perceived as benefiting their competitors more than Nvidia would like.

  6. Not so surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    His declining health was already known, and he was hospitalized for chest pains about a week before he died.

    Hardly unusual for one of the many internet denizens to make an accurate private prediction that his time was soon.

    1. Re:Not so surprising by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I guess that makes sense.

  7. Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wouldn't be making this comment if the OP didn't mention loving Valve. I think it's absolutely lovely that Valve has done this, but I kinda hate Valve.

    Valve seems to have problems internally that's lead me to believe that it's not worth hanging hopes that they'll usher in a true golden age era of PC gaming.

    First, there seems to be some bizarre drama going on inside of Valve, as evidenced here. The flat structure isn't as idyllic as once thought.

    Then there's problems inside of their online market place. Shit just doesn't work. Valve doing a bad job policing Greenlight. I'm not even going to bring up Hatred.

    And of course, where the bloody hell is Half Life 3? Or the steambox? Or a stable release ready version of steamOS?

    Valve can't be all things to all people and try to spread itself as thin as possible. It winds up doing nothing well and it's all starting to fall apart. I just hope they let us know what happened to Barney Calhoun before the company shits the bed.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    1. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I wish people understood how cheaply Valve is doing all this. They are building a gravity well, a potential, not a single machine. Sony and MS spent orders of magnitude more money to get where Valve is in the console process. WE are seeing a console built from the ground up, using what we have lying around. MS spent more money on their controller than Valve has spent on the entire SteamOS project.

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      Good-bye
    2. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 2

      What I've seen for the last 10 years of watching Valve is seeing a company with seemingly no care about release dates. We all want to have a good laugh at Peter Molyneux for over promising and under delivering... but he delivers on time.

      Valve isn't being serious about running their business. It's like children are running the company and they occasionally put something out.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    3. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      You are so wrong it hurts. Look at DOTA 2. Its a monster of epic proportions... Valve just solved the mouse/controller schism problem. They are going ot let you pipe your PC to your TV for $50 per screen.....They are way more serious then you imagine.

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      Good-bye
    4. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      YAMOBA 2 is out. After they bought it from another developer.

      Neat hardware projects are coming out ... with no actual release date. Also one of those things is basically a wireless HDMI cable. Which has been long solved.

      I'm just kinda done with Valve.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    5. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      And of course, where the bloody hell is Half Life 3? Or the steambox? Or a stable release ready version of steamOS?

      No news on HL3 (and that's actually kinda a fact a lot of people miss: no news. They've never announced they've been working on it at all, all the expectation is fan hype, not DNF-style vaporware... which, as a Half-Life fan, is annoying, true). As far as the Steambox goes, well, they've got a release data. SteamOS they've been working on with fairly regular patches, apparently, and I'd assume the November date holds for that too. As far as the internal drama goes: that was almost two years ago, by a fired employee: not exactly an objective source, generally speaking. They've shown few signs of being internally fractured otherwise.

      The thing about Valve is: they do a lot of experimentation. Some of it doesn't work out. Some of it works out fantastically. But they're actually experimenting, and in the world of video gaming, that's not all that common from AAA game developers.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    6. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by SoftwareArtist · · Score: 1

      > Or the steambox? Or a stable release ready version of steamOS?

      Here you go, just as you asked for!

      http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

      Did you do that on purpose? ;)

      --
      "I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
    7. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 0

      They DID announce HL2 Ep 3 for Christmas of 2007.

      Which well at this point, they might as well just release HL3.

      Peter Molyneux's problem is that he over promises and under delivers. Valve's problem is that they over promise and sometimes never deliver.

      As far as the Steam Machine thing goes, I didn't notice the Steam Machines are actually showing a release. Which, good on them.

      As far as Valve's internal drama, It's not just Jeri Ellsworth.

      If they get their shit together and start releasing things, I'll cut them some slack. But after really waiting around and watching, I'm just not impressed and I'm not "in love" with Valve like the OP says I should be.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    8. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      WTF are you smoking?

      They're selling custom made PCs as a console, the didn't do jack shit other than design a controller to go with it, and the controller looks kind of lame too.

      Didn't write the OS

      They have essentially 1 title the make as far as games go, and then they sell some mods other people built for it.

      So basically, you think that piggy backing on the work of Microsoft, Sony, AMD, Intel, nVidia, and all the other game developers and the groundwork laid by all these people ... that Valve is doing it all by themselves?

      Vulkan isn't their work either, they are writing a driver ... Does that mean the Mesa team is a console maker? What about Linus? Perhaps RMS because some of the people involved use Emacs?

      Where is the SDK for SteamOS that valve created? Whats that? They didn't make one other than an API library for access Steam?

      SteamBox's are nothing like an actual console, its kind of retarded to even compare them beyond 'they both can run games'

      And to be clear ... WHERE IS THE STEAM BOX? Its not like you can buy it or anything related to it, can you?

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    9. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Did you do that on purpose? ;)

      Yes, because you're making the point for him.

      You linked to a story about things that can't actually be bought. Its got pictures of prototypes, but you can't go BUY a SteamBox or a Steam controller can you?

      You can not actually buy anything in that article, nothing. The article is little more than a press release for Valve.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    10. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's wrong with Hatred?

    11. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      No product, no credit.

      With Valve, I'll believe it when it launches, and even then I'm skeptical it'll run.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    12. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Let me talk about Bayonetta for a second.

      Bayonetta's character as a sassy, sexy, badass bitch who'll stomp your brains in and look awesome doing it is absolutely fantastic.

      However, her character and the games that she is in exist in a cultural context wherein the finer nuances of the character are lost and while in another time and another context, would be absolutely fine, are used to reenforce shitty sexist ideas about women, specifically women in games.

      Now. Hatred has pretty much the same problem. Looks like a fun game, but we're all stewing in a morass of toxic violent masculinity. If we weren't in a place where oh say as an example(of many), sexually frustrated men decide to violently take out their frustrations on women, and failing that anyone who's within firing range... Yeah. I don't argue that games *make* you violent, however I will argue that culture as a whole glorifies violence and this would just reenforce that narrative. Calvin sums it up here

      Sure, they're developed by a Polish team, but do I think that it should be for sale? No. Not here. Do I think the Government should do anything about it? No, that's censorship. It sounds like a great game if I wasn't worried it was going to reenforce someone's crappy idea of dealing with life was to get a bunch of military grade weapons and go on a shooting spree.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    13. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      No, hardware vendors are selling machines, not Valve. Or you can make your own. This is what im talking about, the Steam Box is an IDEA, not a singular machine or design. Its a way of using what you have to make your own, or buy a fully formed dedicated box. Its an alternative and wont fit into any one pre-existing container currently on the market. Its a console built from the ground up organically, not empirically from the top down. I have a good/better/best Steam Machine setup since the concept was first announced in 2012. Its not a box, its a way to dedicate hardware to play games.

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      Good-bye
    14. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SteamOS will be released at the earlier of Microsoft demanding games on Windows be sold through some kind of Windows Store or the Steambox release. Steamboxes will come out the door the second Microsoft announces that Windows will give priority to software sold through the Windows Store and take 10% off the top, or, when hardware better than consoles gets cheaper.

      The best that can be done so far is http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/wiki/builds#wiki_the_next-gen_crusher . That's about the same price as a console, some specs are lower, and it doesn't have the X-factor, HSA. But wait a year or two, and you can have a Steambox that outperforms the consoles.

      You'll have a Steambox then, or if Microsoft gets any ideas.

    15. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's a way to make sure Microsoft doesn't take Valve's business selling games by getting everyone to publish through a Windows Store. That's the actual reason. Not any of the marketing hasbara you say.

    16. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Lololol. PCMR. Seriously. Peecee gamers, stop linking there. Stop referencing a stupid, insensitive joke from nearly a decade ago that was mocking you. People will start to think you're socially inept weirdos or something.

      Only in peecee gamer logic can 480 bucks be in the same ballpark as 399. Oh and you have to build it yourself and it'll take up more space and has a PSU that provides 6 times the average load of a current gen console and you still have to provide input devices.

      The kind of mindset needed to look at this and think, "this will be much better when the company who couldn't put out software on time is responsible for the OS" is staggering.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    17. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So nice of Valve to *let* me feed a video signal to my TV from my PC for the low fee of $50.

      I mean - it sure will be swell of them to use that time machine they're obviously building to jump back 6 years to let me do it back when I first hooked my TV and PC together with a DVI to HDMI adapter. Really swell of them to let me do this on a 6 year deferred payment plan too! It's still working well for me as I type this *right now* so they must have been/are/will be on to something!

      Also - I shouldn't judge their controller design until I actually use one. Yet I have used a laptop trackpad to try and play games with before and I don't see how making me use one with a thumb will be an improvement over just having a joystick, much less offering anything like the fidelity a real mouse offers. Until consumers have had a chance to adopt / reject the thing I think your claim of them closing the mouse/controller schism is premature.

    18. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by Andtalath · · Score: 1

      Huh?
      It will start costing money?

    19. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by MrVictor · · Score: 1

      But that's the thing though. They aren't doing it. All Valve has to show for their lofty efforts is a showcase of vaporware and a bunch of pie-in-the-sky internet articles.

    20. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Not everyone can snake HDMI. An HDMI cable can EASILY cost more than $50 for certain runs, even from monoprice. Further, splitting HDMI to multiple monitors is a giant hassle sometimes. $50 for a custom remote HDMI system is DAMN impressive. This is WAY cheaper then i thought it would be. You arent seeing outside of your tiny box.

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      Good-bye
    21. Re:Neat, where's HL3? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      NO, the Steam Link devices are $50 each.

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      Good-bye
  8. Re:Compatible with Systemd? by stooo · · Score: 1

    Or "Not Yet"
    In a few years, the whole ecosystem will be swallowed by systemD

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    aaaaaaa