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DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#61

Post by Rusky »

wmf wrote: post #6

...and extend. I'm sure this architecture was easier for MS but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

In the linked thread the Microsoft developers explicitly deny that this is the intent, if that's worth anything to you.

The goal, rather, is to take all the usual (for the Linux side) GPU stuff and give it access to the Windows host's GPU, when running on WSL.

That is, they are already working on getting OpenGL/Vulkan/etc. to run on top of this: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/intr...

Rather than "get people to write code that runs on WSL2 but not regular Linux," the goal is "get code that runs on regular Linux but not WSL to run on WSL2."

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#62

Post by anaisbetts »

Mic92 wrote: post #7
_vbdg wrote: post #2

> This also enables third party APIs, such as the popular NVIDIA Cuda compute API, to be hardware accelerated within a WSL environment. Dollars to donuts this is why Microsoft is implementing this. GPU acceleration is becoming a critical feature for many users (but especially developers) and this will continue. If WSL is to be a serious competitor, this is necessary and I'm glad to see it showing up. This is true of…

Do ML people actually care about DirectX? I thought everyone is using CUDA? Anyway in my university building I have not seen anyone that does machine learning on Windows.

They typically don't - the team published both a special build of Tensorflow that uses DirectX, as well as working with nVidia to get CUDA running against their DX Linux kernel implementation

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#63

Post by badRNG »

monocasa wrote: post #59
badRNG wrote: post #54

The title is misleading. This isn't DirectX on Linux. This is DirectX API access for WSL exclusively. It will lock ML projects into Windows/WSL for the price of access to the DirectX API and at the expense of development of other projects like Vulkan for native Linux.

Not anymore so than they're already locked into CUDA. It's more a WDDM bridge than a strict DirectX bridge.

I don't see how being "locked into CUDA" should make one less skeptical of a change that will functionally lock projects into Windows. I can't help but think this is going to siphon resources from Linux native graphics development.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#64

Post by ghostpepper »

miffe wrote: post #29
_vbdg wrote: post #2

> This also enables third party APIs, such as the popular NVIDIA Cuda compute API, to be hardware accelerated within a WSL environment. Dollars to donuts this is why Microsoft is implementing this. GPU acceleration is becoming a critical feature for many users (but especially developers) and this will continue. If WSL is to be a serious competitor, this is necessary and I'm glad to see it showing up. This is true of…

They are also adding an wayland server. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsy...

Aren't large parts of the wayland stack incompatible with NVIDIA drivers? It would be ironic if Microsoft was the one to bridge that gap.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#65

Post by noderat »

christoph-heiss wrote: post #3

FYI: This is the first draft of the Microsoft Virtual GPU (vGPU) driver. The driver exposes a paravirtualized GPU to user mode applications running in a virtual machine on a Windows host. This enables hardware acceleration in environment such as WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) where the Linux virtual machine is able to share the GPU with the Windows host. So this isn't actual "DirectX on Linux", just a driver for a…

No, if you read the blog post on Microsoft's site it goes into more detail:

This is the real and full D3D12 API, no imitations, pretender or reimplementation here… this is the real deal. libd3d12.so is compiled from the same source code as d3d12.dll on Windows but for a Linux target. It offers the same level of functionality and performance (minus virtualization overhead).

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#66

Post by squarefoot »

wmf wrote: post #6

...and extend. I'm sure this architecture was easier for MS but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

> but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

Which is exactly what I was expecting since day one when WSL was announced. WSL is going to slowly kill Linux, or to be more accurate, it will kill any Linux (be it on servers or desktops) not Microsoft branded and distributed. Forks on smaller embedded systems will resist for a while, until one day MS decides to port some killer technology de facto embracing them as well.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#67

Post by dade_ »

badRNG wrote: post #47
Avamander wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an attempt to win back ML segment from Linux to Windows. There are three letters back in my mind that sound like screaming, but too early to tell unfortunately.

How is it too early to tell? It is an extension of the capability of WSL, giving you that sweet convenience of the DirectX API with your existing ML project. Of course, this extension makes your project incompatible with desktop Linux once adopted.

Not necessarily. It is not possible to access the GPU in WSL at all right now, so I need to dual boot which also means dealing with Linux desktop compatibility issues with my laptop. As long as I can use the same ML framework (without DirectX API), then this poses no compatibility issues at all. It just means I can develop & run my ML code in WSL.

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#68

Post by ghostpepper »

Rusky wrote: post #61
wmf wrote: post #6

...and extend. I'm sure this architecture was easier for MS but it opens the door to code that runs on WSL2 that doesn't run on regular Linux.

In the linked thread the Microsoft developers explicitly deny that this is the intent, if that's worth anything to you. The goal, rather, is to take all the usual (for the Linux side) GPU stuff and give it access to the Windows host's GPU, when running on WSL. That is, they are already working on getting OpenGL/Vulkan/etc. to run on top of this: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/intr... Rather t…

Does the intent matter if the result is the same?

Re: DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux

#70

Post by deadbunny »

_vbdg wrote: post #2

> This also enables third party APIs, such as the popular NVIDIA Cuda compute API, to be hardware accelerated within a WSL environment. Dollars to donuts this is why Microsoft is implementing this. GPU acceleration is becoming a critical feature for many users (but especially developers) and this will continue. If WSL is to be a serious competitor, this is necessary and I'm glad to see it showing up. This is true of…

Yup, from one of the MS staff replies further in the thread[1]

> There is a single usecase for this: WSL2 developer who wants to run machine learning on his GPU. The developer is working on his laptop, which is running Windows and that laptop has a single GPU that Windows is using.

Can't say I can get behind MS trying to shift maintenance for a Windows only "feature" onto the Linux devs here.

1. https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/19/1139

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