RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver Adds Sparse Texture Support For GFX9/Vega & Newer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: RadeonSI Gallium3D Driver Adds Sparse Texture Support For GFX9/Vega & Newer

As one of the last major feature changes heading into Mesa Git this calendar year, RadeonSI Gallium3D as the open-source OpenGL driver for modern AMD Radeon GPUs there is now sparse texture support...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RadeonSI-Sparse-Textures

[xcom]

I have Vega56, but which game uses this extension?

[microcode]

I have Vega56, but which game uses this extension?

Doom (2016) makes use of it. It is intended for virtual texturing (a.k.a. "megatexture"); where you stuff many/all your textures into one large texture, and transform the texture coordinates when loading geometry, or in the vertex shader. Sparse textures are useful when the virtual size of a texture is larger than you want to upload during a single frame, or when the used parts of the texture atlas are an awkward shape (i.e. all across the top of a square atlas).

Of course, in the case of Doom (2016), you'd already be using the equivalent with the Vulkan renderer.

[lucrus]

Of course, in the case of Doom (2016), you'd already be using the equivalent with the Vulkan renderer.

Does the Vulkan renderer support this even for Polaris?

[microcode]

Does the Vulkan renderer support this even for Polaris?

I'm not sure, but I recall someone mentioning that it uses sparse binding; I would assume Polaris supports that but I'm not running any Polaris cards anymore to check.