The Vulkan & SPIR-V Presentations From NVIDIA GTC 2015

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Vulkan & SPIR-V Presentations From NVIDIA GTC 2015

The Vulkan, SPIR-V, and OpenCL 2.1 slides from last week's GPU Tech Conference are now online...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Khronos-GTC-2015-Slides

[adakite]

The question is that, will NVIDIA finally decide to support OpenCL evolution, they are still stuck to OCL 1.1 on Linux (I'm not quite sure on Mac OS X, my Mathematica tells me that OpenCL 1.2 is supported with my Geforce).

Will we see OpenCL 2.1 support in the next Nvidia Drivers? That's a big question I would like to have answer to.

[xylef]

The question is that, will NVIDIA finally decide to support OpenCL evolution, they are still stuck to OCL 1.1 on Linux (I'm not quite sure on Mac OS X, my Mathematica tells me that OpenCL 1.2 is supported with my Geforce).

Will we see OpenCL 2.1 support in the next Nvidia Drivers? That's a big question I would like to have answer to.

The new beta driver (349.12) seems to be claiming 1.2 support on my GTX 660.

[sabun]

Will we see OpenCL 2.1 support in the next Nvidia Drivers? That's a big question I would like to have answer to.

According to xylef here, it's version support is now at OpenCL 1.2. So, it looks like it's moving. What exactly do you use OpenCL for in Linux? (just curious)

I wonder though, why does there seem to be a lack of news regarding AMD and Vulkan? The first Vulkan driver we have is an Intel one. I thought AMD had the upper hand here since Vulkan is based off AMD's Mantle. Does anyone have AMD specific news regarding their Vulkan efforts? The only thing I've seen so far is from Graham Sellers explaining Vulkan on Khronos's Youtube channel.

[dragorth]

According to xylef here, it's version support is now at OpenCL 1.2. So, it looks like it's moving. What exactly do you use OpenCL for in Linux? (just curious)

I wonder though, why does there seem to be a lack of news regarding AMD and Vulkan? The first Vulkan driver we have is an Intel one. I thought AMD had the upper hand here since Vulkan is based off AMD's Mantle. Does anyone have AMD specific news regarding their Vulkan efforts? The only thing I've seen so far is from Graham Sellers explaining Vulkan on Khronos's Youtube channel.

Both Nvidia and AMD showed at the GDC, but the reason we are seeing so much Nvidia news is due to their conference they hosted just a week later. Intel is aggressively pushing Vulkan due to the benefits its onboard graphics will receive, as are ARM and Imagination Technologies. However, AMD has essentially already shown us Vulkan, in the form of Mantle.

We are also seeing news, not necessarily here, about the next version of DX which Vulkan will directly compete. Like this article from PCper.com about the api overhead of DX11, DX11 Multithreaded, Mantle, and DX12. This article is interesting thanks to Mantle being essentially an early version of Vulkan for AMD. Vulkan may add some overhead to be more vender neutral, but we should still expect numbers similar to this.

And, AMD has released what is effectively a guide to their early implementation of Vulkan as the Mantle docs, so you could be testing out how to write for that model now, assuming you have access to a supported card and Windows, versus every other manufacturer being behind in this area.

[Dukenukemx]

More developers will use Vulkan over DX12 because Xbox One just doesn't have the market share. PS4 having nearly twice as much makes Vulkan more attractive for developers. Also even with Windows you won't have to worry about if everyone is using Windows 10, which despite the free upgrade within a year, not everyone will. Gaming on Linux has gotten so good that there's now more games on Linux than on Mac OS X.

Hopefully AMD open source guys will get Vulkan working soon. AMD did hire 2 more guys right? Nvidia will probably just fart it out with new drivers without telling anyone. Haven't heard anything about nouveau, and I do have a couple of laptops running those drivers. But I think it's safe to say that unless Nvidia hires their own open source developers, nouveau isn't going to be anything but just a way to get video working before you install Nvidia drivers. I have more faith in Red Hat working on those drivers than Nvidia does.

[johnc]

More developers will use Vulkan over DX12 because Xbox One just doesn't have the market share. PS4 having nearly twice as much makes Vulkan more attractive for developers.

What does Vulkan have to do with the PS4?

[smitty3268]

More developers will use Vulkan over DX12 because Xbox One just doesn't have the market share. PS4 having nearly twice as much makes Vulkan more attractive for developers. Also even with Windows you won't have to worry about if everyone is using Windows 10, which despite the free upgrade within a year, not everyone will. Gaming on Linux has gotten so good that there's now more games on Linux than on Mac OS X.

Neither console will be using DX12 or Vulkan, both will be for PC games. The consoles already have their own low-level API's available.

Hopefully AMD open source guys will get Vulkan working soon. AMD did hire 2 more guys right?

They put up a notice to hire them. It will probably be 6 months before they are actually hired, working, and up to speed with everything.

Anyway, don't expect any of the vendors to release drivers before the API is officially finalized. It sounds like that will happen sometime late this year (maybe November-ish?). Then you'll probably see a several vendors release support for it at once. Mesa support will probably be another 6 months or so after that.

[dragorth]

Neither console will be using DX12 or Vulkan, both will be for PC games. The consoles already have their own low-level API's available.


They put up a notice to hire them. It will probably be 6 months before they are actually hired, working, and up to speed with everything.

Anyway, don't expect any of the vendors to release drivers before the API is officially finalized. It sounds like that will happen sometime late this year (maybe November-ish?). Then you'll probably see a several vendors release support for it at once. Mesa support will probably be another 6 months or so after that.

Xbox One will be getting DX12 when it gets Windows 10. Now, it will still have its current low level api, which is based on DX11. All of the Windows 10 devices will have DX12, so long as the hardware supports it, which Xbox One does, and drivers are available for it. This is part of the Universal APP platform, so it will also be available on Windows 10 mobile, where it should reduce battery consumption.

What does this have to do with Vulkan? Vulkan will not be on the Xbox One. Period. I doubt it will be on any phone based on Windows 10 Mobile, or whatever they call it. Which are devices up to 8". Intel based tablet devices might, but that is little more than a hope. It is more likely that tablets 8" and up could, as they will have access to the Desktop portion of Windows 10.

This means that the "exciting" phone devices from Microsoft probably won't carry Vulkan, and so Vulkan simply can't compete on that platform. It can compete in the form factor, in the form of Android devices, Linux/Ubuntu devices and hopefully iOS devices. It will directly compete with DX12 on Windows Desktops, by being available on Windows 7 and up vs DX12 only on Windows 10. And it will compete with DX12 on Linux and Steam Machines. And once again, hopefully Apple adopts it for OS X, rather than stick with the current 4.1 implementation of OpenGL as they have for the last two releases.

[Awesomeness]

What does Vulkan have to do with the PS4?

The Vulkan announcement spoke of support for consoles. I think we can all agree that Xbox is highly unlikely to support Vulkan. That leaves either PlayStation or Steam Machines if that latter even count as consoles rather than PCs.