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AMD to open-source Vulkan Linux driver ahead of Xmas

by Mark Tyson on 14 December 2017, 13:01

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), Linux

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The AMD Vulkan Linux Driver will be open sourced before Xmas, according to a report from Linux-focussed tech site Phoronix. Apparently Linux users have been waiting for this patiently for nearly two years, since the debut of Vulkan 1.0. Between then and now the AMD Vulkan driver’s source has been closed.

The slide below came in the Adrenalin driver press deck but Phoronix highlights that the open sourcing is not of this driver but of the Vulkan driver. In the next few days the open source driver should appear on Github, under the GPUOpen umbrella. Pondering over the slide you can see that AMD reckons its release will accelerate Vulkan development on Linux, help with fast support for new AMD hardware as it is released, provide Linux devs with access to the Radeon GPU Porfiler tool set, make it eacy to integrate AMD’s Vulkan extensions, and enabled third party contributions.

Phoronix notes that the full-featured Vulkan driver that AMD has been investing in the past two or more years will be open-sourced and that it is not a driver living within Mesa – it has its own code base and interfaces with libdrm / AMDGPU DRM / LLVM directly.

Linux developers produced the Mesa-based RADV while waiting for AMD’s release. Apparently this is now mature enough that the developers intend to continue its development, rather than ditch it when AMD’s Vulkan driver gets open-sourced, as was originally intended.

When the Vulkan Linux driver source code release drops, Phoronix promises to be among the first to test it out, comparing it with RADV which is already a staple package of many Linux distributions.



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Occasionally I think Hexus really needs proofreaders…
This could be very interesting in the future.
Linux is a ‘you have to learn’ operating system unlike windows now that has been dumbed down so much it works like a smart phone…………. free to download Linux (yes just like windows 10 a while back) …. what you got to loose on a live disc or usb copy ? … try it :d
Rubarb
This could be very interesting in the future.
Linux is a ‘you have to learn’ operating system unlike windows now that has been dumbed down so much it works like a smart phone…………. free to download Linux (yes just like windows 10 a while back) …. what you got to loose on a live disc or usb copy ? … try it :d

I tried it, most of my software wouldn't install/work, gave up and went back to windows 10.

On that front I still like to have a look occasionally and this does sound quite an interesting development in the linux world
Rubarb
This could be very interesting in the future.
Linux is a ‘you have to learn’ operating system unlike windows now that has been dumbed down so much it works like a smart phone…………. free to download Linux (yes just like windows 10 a while back) …. what you got to loose on a live disc or usb copy ? … try it :d

Not developed for such an OS since the days of SCO Xenix/Unix. What is the preferred flavour of Linux these days?
kmantere
Occasionally I think Hexus really needs proofreaders…

I had no issues understanding this article.