NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver Finally Adds External Memory Host Support

Written by Michael Larabel in NVIDIA on 23 June 2020 at 01:50 PM EDT. 8 Comments
NVIDIA
NVIDIA today released a new Vulkan beta driver for Linux systems at version 440.66.17.

New to this Vulkan beta driver update is VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state and VK_EXT_external_memory_host support. Additionally, the Vulkan vkCmdMultiDraw*IndirectCount performance should be better for Pascal and older GPUs.

VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state was just introduced in this weekend's Vulkan 1.2.145 release with this extension being for adding more dynamic state for suiting applications needing to reduce the number of pipeline state objects they are compiling/binding.

This NVIDIA Vulkan beta driver also now supports VK_EXT_external_memory_host on Linux, which is long overdue. The external memory host extension has been published since 2017 and is for allowing an application/engine to import host allocations and host-mapped foreign device memory as Vulkan memory objects. The Mesa Intel ANV and Radeon RADV drivers have already exposed this extension for a while and even AMDVLK while the NVIDIA Linux driver is rather late to the party with this external memory host support.

The latest NVIDIA Vulkan beta drivers for Windows and Linux are available from developer.nvidia.com.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week