AMD Publishes Preview Linux Hybrid Driver With Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5 Support (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: AMD has finally published the previously talked about closed-source Radeon Vulkan driver for Linux. Announced by AMD via the Phoronix Forums is the new hybrid driver dubbed "AMD GPU-PRO Beta Driver – Linux." This closed-source user-space driver provides the first AMD Vulkan support on Linux along with OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 2.0, and VDPAU video acceleration capabilities. But in using the open-source AMDGPU kernel driver, only the very latest AMD GPUs are currently supported (GCN 1.2+). Update: 03/19 03:22 GMT by T : Sorry for the borked link; now fixed.

Comments

Closed source...

[paskie]

So it's how long, about 8 years, since AMD announced it's going open source with its GPU drivers?

They did say it's going to take a while to fully shelve Catalyst, and I could understood if the new open source drivers didn't fully support 5+ years old GPUs due to various transition periods etc. But really?!

Re:Closed source...

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...did you bother to read TFA? AMD has ASKED the community for help, given them the code, which is exactly what the community asked for in the first place and...nothing.

So its kinda hypocritical to bitch when the community has got the code and just haven't gotten it done yet. Maybe they are having issues, maybe they are too busy dealing with the SystemD debacle, who knows, but the community asked for code and they got it so the ball is in their court now.

Re:Closed source...

[jones_supa]

It's amazing that people still think that the open source community is some kind of magical software mill at which you can throw software and expect it to come out polished. There's a lot of broken stuff out there that no one bothers to touch. In this case the even bigger problem is that the "community" quite does not have the production capacity compared to a team of professional full-time GPU engineers. Especially when GPU driver code is extremely challenging.

Re:Closed source...

[gerddie]

So it's how long, about 8 years, since AMD announced it's going open source with its GPU drivers?

They did say it's going to take a while to fully shelve Catalyst, and I could understood if the new open source drivers didn't fully support 5+ years old GPUs due to various transition periods etc. But really?!

This is the open source driver status. Looks pretty good to me. Regarding the new driver, it is part of their mixed open source and closed source strategy: The kernel module is open, AMD provides the closed source user space that that should provide the latest and greatest features, while the community provides user space part as open source that might have to catch up a little performance wise.

Well there's two things with that

[Sycraft-fu]

The first is that writing a graphics driver is REALLY HARD. I think a lot of the people who were complaining and asking didn't really understand the magnitude of what they were talking about. They were people who'd maybe messed around with a network driver or something and said "Huh, drivers aren't that bad." Graphics drivers are ENORMOUS things, exceedingly complex. Lots and lots and lots of code that interacts with a lot of stuff in different ways. I mean the GPU is literally a little computer in many respects. Also GPUs change fast. New generations come out every 2 years or so and are often radically different architectures with tons of new features. So you have continual new work to do. It isn't like a NIC or RAID controller where 95%+ of the features might be copy-paste from the previous gen. I don't think a lot of people understood just how big an undertaking a GPU driver is.

The second is that I think people forget there's a REASON the drivers are closed source and that is they make use of licensed code that cannot be open sourced. Well guess what? That code gets licensed for a reason. It makes developing this stuff easier, more feasible. You don't have that as an OSS developer, of course, so your life is going to be more difficult. I think there is a perception that the closed source drivers are closed "just because" or that the licensed code in them could be ripped out and replaced easily. No, not so much it seems. There's a reason for it.

Re:Well there's two things with that

[bridgmanAMD]

I would actually like some transparency from AMD for your second point. They are using a third party developer? Or maybe third party tools? I can see that maybe 5 years ago.

Nope, all in-house developers. The issue with opening up the remaining bits (at least OpenCL and Vulkan) is that the drivers are cross-OS and include a lot of OS-specific bits (for other OSes than Linux) that we don't have the right to expose publicly. Opening up the code basically involves turning them into Linux-specific drivers, typically making the OS-independent bits smaller but removing any proprietary abstractions that might have been there before, eg rewriting anything that happened to use Windows or MacOS abstractions in the common code.

As the experts for their own hardware I would expect them to hire/contract a platform expert and make their own infrastructure which would be equally open source. Publicize the developers name and simply point to him and we can rake him over the coals.

Seriously, adding *one* person isn't going to even scratch the surface. Adding 20 people maybe... we're talking about 10,000+ KSLOC of code just for OpenGL.

Re:Well there's two things with that

[Kjella]

The first is that writing a graphics driver is REALLY HARD. I think a lot of the people who were complaining and asking didn't really understand the magnitude of what they were talking about. They were people who'd maybe messed around with a network driver or something and said "Huh, drivers aren't that bad." Graphics drivers are ENORMOUS things, exceedingly complex. Lots and lots and lots of code that interacts with a lot of stuff in different ways. I mean the GPU is literally a little computer in many respects. Also GPUs change fast. New generations come out every 2 years or so and are often radically different architectures with tons of new features. So you have continual new work to do. It isn't like a NIC or RAID controller where 95%+ of the features might be copy-paste from the previous gen. I don't think a lot of people understood just how big an undertaking a GPU driver is.

The real issue is that there's no "assembler-level" standard like x86 and ARM. Before Vulkan, there hasn't even been an "intermediate representation-level" standard, which would be something like Java bytecode. Implementing DirectX/OpenGL has been like re-implementing say .NET or Java, huge and evolving high level libraries. Open source has kind of made the divide internally with Gallium3D, drivers write towards that and mesa runs on top of any Gallium3D driver. AMDGPU is another such divide for the latest AMD generation, where the same kernel driver works with both open and closed source UMDs (user mode drivers) which is cutting the stack at a lower level but for AMD only.

You can kinda see the stack fracturing now:
Hardware <--> AMDGPU <--> User mode driver (UMD) for Vulkan <--> OpenGL to Vulkan translation layer <--> "Traditional" applications
Hardware <--> open source <--> closed source, but going open according to AMD <--> closed UMD, Vulkan native or mesa-based shim <--> "Traditional" applications

We're finally approaching a situation where there are parts of the stack to replace, it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing choice. That will make a huge difference.

Good news, great trend.

[blind biker]

Having more manufacturers release Linux drivers, even closed-source, is great, especially considering the other trend of Microsoft fucking their customers with Windows updates.

Re:So, what about Nvidia and Intel?

[drinkypoo]

Is AMD the only company with Linux Vulkan drivers?

No, and learn to internet. Are you new? nVidia has Vulkan support for more cards than AMD does.