Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

igalia.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 327 posts

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#211

Post by david-gpu »

MindSpunk wrote: post #108
fidotron wrote: post #2

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.

> I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.

Often when people run into problems with a GPU they blame "the drivers". How confident are you that the problems you ran into originated from the drivers, and not from other sources, such as the hardware itself? Just because an issue goes away with a driver update it doesn't mean that the problem originated in the driver -- most of the time what happens is that they found a hardware bug and implemented yet another software workaround.

I am not throwing the HW folks under the bus, either. The hardware is immensely complex and it's not that they can release a new revision every month.

One of the main responsibilities of GPU drivers is working around the bugs that are found after hardware is released. That, and getting all the blame.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#212

Post by david-gpu »

mschuster91 wrote: post #194
MindSpunk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for , have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.

Qualcomm is by a lot of accounts on HN a law firm with a side hustle of selling chips.

Worked there for 9 years, can confirm. I wish that our drivers had been open sources, because we poured our souls into them and took pride in the result.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#213

Post by koolala »

Hikikomori wrote: post #128
tapoxi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.

The same api users use?

a social chat interface where bots pretend to be humans.

so its a UI not a API yeah

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#214

Post by david-gpu »

MindSpunk wrote: post #109
l11r wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs either don't have, or that run very slowly. Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not get peak thr…

Snapdragon doesn't do tile based deferred rendering the way Apple does (or did). Snapdragon does (or did) a form of tile-based rendering, but it is a completely different design, with completely different performance tradeoffs.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#215

Post by xinayder »

awill wrote: post #162
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

I have a super high opinion of Valve. Sure, they have loot crates. But sensible people don't buy them. I guess you could blame them for having it in the first place. That's fair I guess. But I've never for a second considered buying any of that junk. I just buy single player offline games with no IAP, and Steam is amazing. It's a million miles ahead of the competitors, and it's really surprising that EA/Ubi etc.. try…

And loot boxes in Valve games never bothered me, because if you want a particular skin you can just buy it off the market. I can't remember being angry at Valve for having loot boxes.

All other games require you to keep opening loot boxes to get what you want.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#216

Post by david-gpu »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #145
fidotron wrote: post #2

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

Every major company open sources software that is not part of its core competitive advantages. It’s part of “commoditizing your complements”

Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks?

OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#217

Post by jakeec »

nolok wrote: post #197
awill wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a super high opinion of Valve. Sure, they have loot crates. But sensible people don't buy them. I guess you could blame them for having it in the first place. That's fair I guess. But I've never for a second considered buying any of that junk. I just buy single player offline games with no IAP, and Steam is amazing. It's a million miles ahead of the competitors, and it's really surprising that EA/Ubi etc.. try…

The problem with loot crates, and the reason why they're being slowly regulated against in several places, is that "sensible people don't buy them" has never stopped people to lose their life to gambling.

I hope everyone who is so outspoken about loot crates are also fighting for TCG packs to be banned/regulated because they are literally the same level of "gambling".

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#218

Post by jakeec »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

> They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc.

You listed one thing. What's the "etc."?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#219

Post by sandGorgon »

the Qualcomm Adreno 750 GPU is a Snapdragon Gen 3 device. This is basically an android device.

I wonder why Valve is maintaining a separate linux and driver fork for this. Snapdragon Gen 3 android game SDK works very well...including Windows emulation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g

not saying what Valve is doing is not spectacular. But i cant help but wonder if it isnt a more productive use of their resources to mainline this in Android ? Maybe even accelerate the Desktop Android merge (which Qualcomm is pushing ! https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googl...)

Android that is Valve compatible will further Valve's goals of open platforms than maintaining their own fork.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#220

Post by jakeec »

RobotToaster wrote: post #175
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

It's amazing that an always-on DRM company can become the "good guy" by staying the same level of asshole they've always been, while every other company became much worse assholes.

Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides. It only sounds like you're making a good point when you frame "provides the best shopping and library experience in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The Valve hate-boner is so weird.
Post reply on HN