Intel Vulkan Linux Driver Adds Conditional Rendering, Draw Indirect Count

The Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver for Linux systems has picked up two more extensions ahead of the Mesa 19.0 feature freeze that is coming up before month's end.

First up, the Intel Vulkan driver now supports VK_EXT_conditional_rendering after a lengthy review/revision process. VK_EXT_conditional_rendering was added to Vulkan 1.1.80 last July and allows for rendering commands to be made selective based upon a value in the buffer memory, in order to allow discard rendering commands based upon a result in GPU memory without having to wait on the application/engine. The conditional rendering can be used with Vulkan draws, compute dispatches, and clearing of attachments. VK_EXT_conditional_rendering is supported by Haswell "Gen 7.5" graphics and newer with the upcoming Mesa 19.0.

Also new within the Intel open-source driver is supporting VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count. This extension works with Ivybridge "Gen 7" graphics and newer on the latest Intel Mesa code. VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count dates back to Vulkan 1.1.76 and originally derived from a similar AMD extension that lets an application source the number of indirect draw calls from a buffer in order to generate an arbitrary number of draw commands and execution without needing to query the host.

These two latest Vulkan extensions landing in the Intel ANV Mesa driver will be found in the v19.0 stable release due out next month along with a number of other performance optimizations and other Vulkan conformance work. With still some days before the 19.0 feature freeze, it's possible we will see more work land.