AMDVLK 2021.Q1.5 Released With Synchronization2, Another Extension To Help DXVK

In addition to yesterday marking the release of Mesa 21.0 that includes the likes of the RADV driver, today AMD released AMDVLK 2021.Q1.5 as their latest official open-source Vulkan driver derived from their cross-platform driver sources.

With AMDVLK 2021.Q1.5 they have updated against the Vulkan 1.2.170 header files, are now using the upstream VMID support, and the GPU debug path has surface capture functionality enabled. There are also three new Vulkan extensions enabled by AMDVLK 2021.Q1.5: VK_KHR_sampler_ycbcr_conversion, VK_KHR_synchronization2, and VK_EXT_4444_formats.

VK_KHR_synchronization2 is arguably the most important extension of the new batch added. VK_KHR_synchronization2 improves Vulkan's core synchronization APIs for simplification and greater usability. VK_KHR_synchronization2 has a number of minor improvements to enhance Vulkan's synchronization support as outlined in the extension doc.

VK_KHR_sampler_ycbcr_conversion is helpful primarily for those processing input from video decoders and cameras. Lastly VK_EXT_4444_formats is useful for handling additional formats that is beneficial when it comes to DXVK and Direct3D over Vulkan translation layers. Since DXVK 1.7.1 last year it's supported making use of EXT_4444_formats and finally it's supported by AMDVLK.

The AMDVLK 2021.Q1.5 driver can be downloaded from GitHub.