News: 0001618512

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Valve/RADV Developers Look At More Per-Game Tuning/Optimizations For Mesa Drivers

([Mesa] 35 Minutes Ago Mesa More Per-Game Tuning)


RADV Radeon Vulkan driver developers on Valve's Linux graphics team are evaluating the idea of greater use of per-game/app profiles within this open-source driver and for Mesa drivers at large. Currently for Mesa drivers with DriConf there is the ability to provide per-game/app workarounds while the consideration now is extending that to allow for more per-game optimizations.

Unlike the graphics drivers on Windows where there is a lot of per-game tuning and the like, for Mesa drivers there hasn't been much so to date. DriConf has largely been used for just working around various OpenGL and Vulkan bugs by different games/engines. Typically just matching against a binary name and applying whatever necessary per-driver overrides and the like. But the hope among the RADV team is to allow for more performance optimizations and other tweaks on a per-game basis.

DriConf would need to be extended to better manage different GPU architectures/generations as well as making it more robust for introducing new options.

There's also the idea raised by RADV developers of doing more for shader replacement/tuning by drivers, another step pursued by graphics driver vendors on Windows.

Right now these are just ideas being tossed around by RADV/Mesa developers, but especially considering Valve's commitment to Linux gaming and their financial backing to the developers involved, it's quite likely this will turn into substantive action. Those interested in the topic of per-game tuning/optimizations for Mesa drivers can see [1]this Mesa GitLab ticket where the topic is now being discussed.



[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/15028


Mass Exodus From Hollywood

During the past week, over 150 Hollywood actors, musicians, writers,
directors, and key grips have quit their day jobs and moved to the Midwest
to engage in quieter occupations such as gardening or accounting. All of
the these people cite piracy as the reason for giving up their careers.

"I simply can't sit by and let my hard work be stolen by some snot nosed
punk over the Internet," explained millionaire movie director Steve
Bergospiel. "There's absolutely no incentive to create movies if they're
going to be transmitted at the speed of light by thousands of infringers.
Such criminal acts personally cost me hundreds -- no, thousands -- of
dollars. I can't take that kind of fear and abuse anymore."

MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood
is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright
infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies
on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the
creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology,
makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright
terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no
wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame."