Valve Now Funding Blumenkrantz - Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan To Continue

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Now Funding Blumenkrantz - Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan To Continue

Longtime open-source developer Mike Blumenkrantz who has been an Enlightenment developer for many years and was working for Samsung's Open-Source Group prior to its demise jumped into the open-source Linux graphics world this year. While being unemployed he began hacking on the Zink Gallium3D code that allows generic OpenGL acceleration over the Vulkan API. He quickly got the code to the point of OpenGL 4.6 support and quite compelling performance compared to where Zink was at earlier this year. Now it turns out he will continue with his Linux graphics adventures thanks to funding from Valve...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Funding-Blumenkrantz

[BNieuwenhuizen]

> Thus for Mesa 20.1 in Q1'2020

Michael While it would be cool I suspect it would need a time-machine ...

[Michael]

> Thus for Mesa 20.1 in Q1'2020

Michael While it would be cool I suspect it would need a time-machine ...

Thanks, fixed.

[ivan.cwb]

> Thus for Mesa 20.1 in Q1'2020

Michael While it would be cool I suspect it would need a time-machine ...

To go back to 2020? Please, NO!

[R41N3R]

This is somehow unexpected. I'm very happy about Valve's commitment to support Mike's fantastic work! At some point in the near future I might only need a Vulkan driver for my hardware :-) Mostly if I had issues with Mesa they have been related to llvm, so I'm quite happy about this new option to use Zink then on top of RADV+ACO.

[peterdk]

Wow, that's great news! Nice that he can keep working on it, since it was quite promising.

[baryluk]

Thank you Valve. And thank you Mike.

[SteamPunker]

You've got to hand it to Valve, they keep putting their money where their mouths are w.r.t. Linux gaming. Kudos!

It does make me wonder, though: at this point, isn't Vulkan making Gallium3D obsolete? The latter was meant as an intermediate lower-level 3D hardware abstraction layer on top of which OpenGL, as well as other higher level APIs such as Direct3D could be implemented. That, or at least common code could be shared between hardware-specific drivers.

But Vulkan is even lower-level than Gallium3D. For instance, Gallium3D has a state tracker. Vulkan doesn't even have that. It's even closer to the metal than Gallium3D, yet it's cross-platform. With Zink, it is now proven that OpenGL performance comparable to hardware-specific OpenGL drivers can be reached on top of Vulkan. So why not fucus on the best, most efficient, most complete and most reliable open source Vulkan drivers one can develop for as many sorts of GPUs as possible, forgoing any development on direct OpenGL drivers and relying on Zink, Proton/vkd3d and the like to provide compatibility with other APIs?

As a bonus, those APIs would automaticlaly be supported on macOS as well, thanks to MoltenVK.

TL;DR: does Vulkan make Gallium3D obsolete or redundant?

[cb88]

You've got to hand it to Valve, they keep putting their money where their mouths are w.r.t. Linux gaming. Kudos!

It does make me wonder, though: at this point, isn't Vulkan making Gallium3D obsolete? The latter was meant as an intermediate lower-level 3D hardware abstraction layer on top of which OpenGL, as well as other higher level APIs such as Direct3D could be implemented. That, or at least common code could be shared between hardware-specific drivers.

But Vulkan is even lower-level than Gallium3D. For instance, Gallium3D has a state tracker. Vulkan doesn't even have that. It's even closer to the metal than Gallium3D, yet it's cross-platform. With Zink, it is now proven that OpenGL performance comparable to hardware-specific OpenGL drivers can be reached on top of Vulkan. So why not fucus on the best, most efficient, most complete and most reliable open source Vulkan drivers one can develop for as many sorts of GPUs as possible, forgoing any development on direct OpenGL drivers and relying on Zink, Proton/vkd3d and the like to provide compatibility with other APIs?

As a bonus, those APIs would automaticlaly be supported on macOS as well, thanks to MoltenVK.

TL;DR: does Vulkan make Gallium3D obsolete or redundant?

No.. Zinc literally uses gallium3d because it needs to track opengl state, and the point of thatis that OpenGL is stateful, and Vulkan is not, you MUST have something to track that statefulness.

Also state trackers in the sense of gallium3d don't mean exactly the same thing as state in OpenGL from the API standpoint, you can have internal state in a driver without the driver itself exposing a stateful API

[needmorehare]

...and this is why I still buy from Steam rather than stores like GOG. Despite no longer using Linux on the desktop any more, any/all investment Valve makes towards the Linux graphics stack keeps the escape hatch available should anything disastrous happen with the brave new world of Windows as a service. After all, migrating to LTSC in a VM can only go so far.