In a recent announcement, engineers from AMD revealed the termination of the project AMDVLK, which focused on developing an open driver for the graphic API VULKAN. This driver was built using the AMD Pal library, which abstracts access to hardware and operating system interfaces. Originally created for the Proprietary Set of AMDGPU-Pro drivers, AMDVLK was later categorized as a revealed project.
Since 2016, the community had been developing the open driver radv in parallel, which is a part of the main composition of MESA. The decision to end work on AMDVLK is attributed to a new strategy aimed at unifying VULKAN drivers. AMD plans to concentrate on developing a unified high-performance code base and providing full official support for the RADV driver in the Linux kernel. Dave Airlie, a co-founder of the Radv driver, welcomed AMD’s decision and expressed hope for additional engineering resources for the RADV project.
Introduced in 2017, the AMDVLK driver faced challenges with distribution and adoption. While RADV was already included in most Linux distributions, AMDVLK struggled to gain widespread use. Despite its limitations, AMDVLK served as a valuable resource for RADV developers seeking technical information about AMD GPUs and problem-solving techniques.
David Airlie highlighted the success of the RADV project as evidence that community-built drivers can compete with those from hardware manufacturers. With AMD now recognizing the advantages of independent open projects, the company has shifted its focus towards supporting and utilizing the RADV driver.