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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

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Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#151

Post by bayindirh »

shmerl wrote: post #149
bayindirh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you won't be able to override the emergency shutdown thresholds in the firmware. I'm a big free and open software advocate. I primarily use free and open source software, and try to open every line of code I write. I'd like to see the firmware on the open like the drivers. I just wanted to talk my understanding of hardware. If my comments sounded otherwise, I'm sorry, my bad.

I've heard from Linux AMD engineers, that they supported the idea of opening up the firmware, and opposition to it wasn't based on the concerns you listed, but primarily driven by DRM (and the need to split it into two variants which is an extra effort).

That's possible & I'd love to see the firmware source code and play with it TBH. I also like AMD because of the efforts they make to open themselves as much as they can.

BTW, I'm not employed by AMD or ATI. I was just one of the independent members while the GPU driver beta testing was closed to outsiders.

DRM always complicates things, but always get broken at the end. Also, it's always a crippling pain.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#152

Post by joshuarubin »

beatgammit wrote: post #123
joshuarubin wrote: post #55

Nvidia refuses to support GBM for Wayland and instead came out with a completely different buffer API, EGLStreams. This is pretty arrogant. As I use sway, and it doesn't support Nvidia, I chose an AMD Vega 64, which works great. https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

How do you like sway? I'm still on an Nvidia GPU, but I might upgrade this year to an AMD GPU, and I've been hesitant to get back into tiling window managers untill I can use one on Wayland.

Love it. That said, the 3rd party application support for wayland is pretty poor. Chrom(ium|e) can’t even do accelerated video under XWayland (so everything is choppy, even on my threadripper system). Firefox is better, but still uses XWayland. Wayland support is available in Firefox nightlies, but it _really_ isn’t ready for daily use yet. For the most part everything works fine, but I’m anxious for native wayland support from many apps (Electron apps in particular).

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#153

Post by swoorup »

zanny wrote: post #82

A lot of people are talking along the lines of "oh AMD is nice but... Nvidia". No, in 2019 all AMD GPUs this decade support OpenGL through 4.5, support Vulkan, and still really don't have a great OpenCL situation (rocm is out of tree on every distro and only supprts parts of 2.0 still). For gaming though, theres no reason not to get an AMD GPU. They are at near performance parity with Nvidia relative to their Windows…

I regret purchasing Nvidia, i run linux for day to day usage. X frequently has issues even with compositor at times. My intel-only laptop is buttery smooth with sway, while i am forced to use X just because of nvidia not supporting wayland properly.

Point is if you are Nvidia and user of open source software stay away from nvidia products

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#154

Post by boudin »

zepearl wrote: post #54
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, the firmware is the same regardless of your OS. think of it like using an open-source client for slack: it still hits the API of a closed blob (the slack servers).

Thx! Then, if the performance is "worse" or "better" for a specific OS, it's just because the code of the open-source part (kernel and/or userland progs) and/or the app (game/application/whatever) is not written as well as on the other OSs, right? Indirectly asking as well: even if the firmware is alway the same one, there is no "part" of the firmware that is dedicated to only a specific OS?

Performance-wise yes, logicaly the difference would come from the driver part.

For the firmware, it's hard to know, i think only someone from AMD can answer this. It's technically possible if part of a firmware is used only by the Windows driver for example. After, I have no idea, if it's the case...

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#155

Post by pjmlp »

beatgammit wrote: post #122
xvilka wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When hell freezes over. Their management seems stuck to agressive anti-FOSS stance forever. Shame to every developer who works for them - it is like working for the evil.

I keep wondering where Oracle and Nvidia come up with their developers. I don't want to work at either because of their complete disregard for FOSS, and most developers I know have the same opinion.

Because not everyone is religious about FOSS and there are lots of interesting things to work on.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#156

Post by geezerjay »

pjmlp wrote: post #140
dragontamer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, in 2019 all AMD GPUs this decade support OpenGL through 4.5, support Vulkan, and still really don't have a great OpenCL situation (rocm is out of tree on every distro and only supprts parts of 2.0 still). To be fair, only Intel has good OpenCL 2.0+ support. NVidia isn't really pushing OpenCL and AMD's ROCm OpenCL driver is still a bit unstable. AMD's OpenCL 2.0 support has always been poor. The Windows OpenCL 2…

Khronos learned too late that the world has moved on and the community wanted to use something else other than C to program their GPGPUs. And they are doing it again with Vulkan. With a large majority looking for higher level wrappers instead of dealing directly with its APIs and increasing number of extensions.

> and the community wanted to use something else other than C to program their GPGPUs.

This assertion makes no sense. The whole reason why these APIs are specified based on C is that once a C API is available its trivial to develop bindings in any conceivable language. You can't do that if you opt for a flavor of the month.

Furthermore, GPGPU applications are performance-driven, and C is unbeatable in this domain. Thus by providing a standard API in C and by enabling standard implementations to be implemented in C you avoid forcing end-users to pay a performance tax just because someone had an irrational fear of C.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#157

Post by AsyncAwait »

sitkack wrote: post #143
AsyncAwait wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so, but my current laptop has a desktop-class Ryzen 7 1700 in it and their mobile offerings usually come with half as many cores, but I guess we'll see what Ryzen 3 has to offer.

Which laptop is this?

The ASUS ROG GL702ZC

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#158

Post by AnthonyMouse »

twtw wrote: post #135
zanny wrote: post #82

A lot of people are talking along the lines of "oh AMD is nice but... Nvidia". No, in 2019 all AMD GPUs this decade support OpenGL through 4.5, support Vulkan, and still really don't have a great OpenCL situation (rocm is out of tree on every distro and only supprts parts of 2.0 still). For gaming though, theres no reason not to get an AMD GPU. They are at near performance parity with Nvidia relative to their Windows…

Your rhetoric is a bit out of date. I have no problem with AMD (their hardware is good!), but I don't think your presentation is accurate. > CUDA Implemented by AMD too, under the moniker "hip." > their RTX crap Vendor-independent via DXR, soon to be available through Vulkan as well. > Gsync Nvidia GPUs now work with freesync monitors > Physx Open source, as of december. I want to feel good about AMD, but they have t…

The reason they're doing that now is AMD forcing them to. nVidia's goal was to lock everyone in, which kind of worked, but everybody hates it. And AMD has been successful enough with their open alternatives that it created the significant risk people could switch to that instead.

It's forcing nVidia's hand. If they try to keep everything proprietary and the market starts to shift to the open alternatives because everybody hates that, everyone who used their solutions to begin with and has to throw them out and start over would be displeased. So their only hope is to try to be just open enough that people continue to use their stuff. But they still suck -- look at the state of the open source drivers for their hardware.

And they should hardly be rewarded for doing the wrong thing for as long as the market would bear. Forgive them after they fall below 40% market share.

Re: AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

#159

Post by AsyncAwait »

swoorup wrote: post #153
zanny wrote: post #82

A lot of people are talking along the lines of "oh AMD is nice but... Nvidia". No, in 2019 all AMD GPUs this decade support OpenGL through 4.5, support Vulkan, and still really don't have a great OpenCL situation (rocm is out of tree on every distro and only supprts parts of 2.0 still). For gaming though, theres no reason not to get an AMD GPU. They are at near performance parity with Nvidia relative to their Windows…

I regret purchasing Nvidia, i run linux for day to day usage. X frequently has issues even with compositor at times. My intel-only laptop is buttery smooth with sway, while i am forced to use X just because of nvidia not supporting wayland properly. Point is if you are Nvidia and user of open source software stay away from nvidia products

Yes, the NVidia Wayland situation is bizzare, with them forcing EGLStreams down on people when nobody wants to use them etc.

I can confirm that besides Intel, AMD plays nicely with Wayland too, am typing this from a Wayland GNOME session using the open-source AMDGPU drivers.

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