You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.
The open source Vulkan driver for AMD hardware 'radv' now gets 'effectively a pass' for conformance. An awesome milestone for AMD fans.

From the blog post:
QuoteTest run totals:
Passed: 109293/150992 (72.4%)
Failed: 0/150992 (0.0%)
Not supported: 41697/150992 (27.6%)
Warnings: 2/150992 (0.0%)

They do specifically note that the "Not supported" section isn't missing features, but rather pointless things and stuff the hardware doesn't support.

It still needs to go through the official Khronos Group procedure, so they can't say the driver is actually conforming properly just yet.

I still personally plan to switch to an AMD GPU when the time arises, so it's really pleasing to know that things are in such good shape.

Thanks for the tip Joeri! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Drivers, Mesa, Vulkan
9 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
13 comments
Page: 1/2»
  Go to:

ElectricPrism May 4, 2017
So in other words this means that RADV driver is 72.4% conforming to the rendering test in the same way that browsers conform to ACID2 and ACID3 test to test their rendering capabilities?

Fantastic. I was hoping however to read that the pass was a "go-ahead" from their legal department or some other management to release code. Soon? Hopefully.
Quoting: ElectricPrismSo in other words this means that RADV driver is 72.4% conforming to the rendering test in the same way that browsers conform to ACID2 and ACID3 test to test their rendering capabilities?

Fantastic. I was hoping however to read that the pass was a "go-ahead" from their legal department or some other management to release code. Soon? Hopefully.

You're mistaking drivers I think; RADV is the mesa backed driver and all the code is already open and available. AMD has an in house vulkan driver that currently performs slightly better than RADV and I think that's the one you thought this article was about. They're still waiting for the greenlight to open source that one.
Creak May 4, 2017
Knowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...
pete910 May 4, 2017
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: CreakKnowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...

They would more than likely merge the two.
johndoe86x May 4, 2017
Quoting: pete910
Quoting: CreakKnowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...

They would more than likely merge the two.

This would make the most sense, I could see the radv developers "migrating" and submitting their patches directly to the AMD source.
pete910 May 4, 2017
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Or AMD would hand it to dave to integrate into RADv which I feel they would do.
STiAT May 4, 2017
Quoting: pete910
Quoting: CreakKnowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...

They would more than likely merge the two.

I highly doubt that. We may see the AMDGPU-PRO driver making use of radv in future instead of their own implementation below AMDs AL in their driver. Same thing which goes on now with the DC/DAL patchset. It's more work involved there for the AMD devs, and AMD has been .. slightly pissed off not being able to do what ever they want for their hardware in the kernel, so we may still end up with two implementations in the end ;-).


Last edited by STiAT on 4 May 2017 at 8:32 pm UTC
MintedGamer May 4, 2017
Just in time for VEGA.
MayeulC May 4, 2017
Quoting: CreakKnowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...

While that *might* be true for the kernel (sort of, you can have both amdgpu and radeon enabled for the earlier GPUs, and blacklist one at startup time), RADV and the AMDGPU-PRO (vulkan) driver are using the same kernel module, so there is really no such policy.

In theory, it would be pretty easy, even right now, I think, to make a userspace utility to launch an application with one driver or another, with a right click.
Those are the userspace drivers, they should just communicate with the kernel module via libdrm or similar, and handle the shader compilation, scheduling, etc.

Quoting: ElectricPrismSo in other words this means that RADV driver is 72.4% conforming to the rendering test in the same way that browsers conform to ACID2 and ACID3 test to test their rendering capabilities?
Not really, more like your car is 100% operational (conformant), but it doesn't have some options that could apply to other products: skis, wings, thrusters, whatever. Maybe even some more relevant but narrow-use functionality like an elevated air intake.
Sorry, that was the only analogy that I could think of.
pete910 May 4, 2017
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: STiAT
Quoting: pete910
Quoting: CreakKnowing that the Linux kernel maintainers don't allow two drivers enabled for the same hardware at the same time (from what I understood), there's going to be a battle between RADV and AMD if they open source their Vulkan drivers...

They would more than likely merge the two.

I highly doubt that. We may see the AMDGPU-PRO driver making use of radv in future instead of their own implementation below AMDs AL in their driver. Same thing which goes on now with the DC/DAL patchset. It's more work involved there for the AMD devs, and AMD has been .. slightly pissed off not being able to do what ever they want for their hardware in the kernel, so we may still end up with two implementations in the end ;-).

We are referring to Vulkan and Radv not the kernel driver
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.