Mesa’s NVK Vulkan driver atop the Nouveau DRM kernel driver is now formally Vulkan 1.0 conformant for passing all the mandatory Vulkan 1.0 conformance check suite circumstances. Although do not get your hopes too excessive for this open-source NVIDIA Linux driver because the efficiency remains to be total gradual and the driving force stack stays a work-in-progress, however no less than it is a step in the proper route.
Religion Ekstrand who has been main a lot of the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver improvement introduced at the moment that the driving force is now thought of a Vulkan 1.0 conformant implementation. It is now listed on KHronos.org as a conformant implementation for varied generations of NVIDIA GPUs when utilizing the most recent Linux kernel and Mesa.
This although simply implies that it passes all the Vulkan 1.0 assessments however not that it is prepared for Linux avid gamers/lovers or that it is a speedy implementation. To not point out, VKD3D-Proton requires no less than Vulkan 1.3 assist. Again in August I posted some preliminary NVK benchmarks. It is improved since then however nonetheless not appropriate for Linux avid gamers with fashionable titles. Extra lately the brand new NAK compiler merged as one other thrilling stepping stone towards higher efficiency ultimately. I am at the moment engaged on some up to date NVK benchmarks atop Linux 6.7 with the newly-merged NVIDIA GSP firmware assist within the Nouveau DRM kernel driver for enhancing the facility administration on RTX 20 collection and newer in addition to offering preliminary RTX 40 collection assist.
The open-source group backed by the likes of Collabora and Purple Hat proceed doing a pleasant job whereas NVIDIA maintains their out-of-tree open-source kernel module and stays with their closed-source user-space OpenGL / Vulkan / CUDA / OpenCL drivers. NVIDIA’s proprietary driver stack is terrific should you do not care about software program licenses and simply need all the options and efficiency proper now, however for these pursuing open-source drivers are higher off with AMD Radeon or Intel Arc Graphics for now till the NVK/Nouveau assist advances sufficient for end-users.
As Religion Ekstrand wrote in at the moment’s weblog publish in regards to the Vulkan 1.0 conformance:
NVK remains to be labeled “experimental” inside Mesa however the future is trying vivid!
