• teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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    7 months ago

    So, here’s the thing, I don’t consider myself an expert in many things, but this subject is literally my day job, and it’s possibly the only thing I do consider myself an expert in. And I’m telling you, you are confused and I would gladly help clear it up if you’ll allow me.

    They could do what AMD does on Linux and rely on the openGL upstream implementation from Mesa

    Nvidia’s OGL driver is a driver. Mesa’s radv backend is a driver. Nouveau, the open source Nvidia meds backend is a driver. An opengl implementation does a driver make.

    There was a time they did, yes

    What GPU did Microsoft’s driver target? Or are you referring to a software implementation?

    Yes and No… DirectX 3D was always low-level

    You literally said that Mantle was inspired by DX12, which is false. You can try to pivot to regurgitating more Mantle history, but I’m just saying…

    No its not, see above…

    Yes, it is, see above my disambiguation of the term “low-level”. The entire programming community has always used the term to refer to how far “above the metal” you are, not how granular an API is. The first party DX9 and DX12 drivers are equally “low-level”, take it from someone who literally wrote them for a living. The APIs themselves function very differently to give finer control over the API, and many news outlets and forums full of confused information (like this one) like to infer that that means it’s “lower level”.

    Your last statement doesn’t make sense, so I don’t know how to correct it.

    • heartsofwar@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Nvidia’s OGL driver is a driver. Mesa’s radv backend is a driver. Nouveau, the open source Nvidia meds backend is a driver. An opengl implementation does a driver make.

      No, a driver is kernel code that interfaces with hardware; Mesa’s RADV implements Vulkan and RadeonSI implements OpenGL but both sit at the user level and get called by AMDGPU (the driver in the kernel). Above the kernel at user level is simply software…

      Nouveau is a driver, yes… but it is in the kernel and calls into Mesa as well…

      What GPU did Microsoft’s driver target? Or are you referring to a software implementation?

      You seem to be confused that Microsoft needed to develop a GPU before implementing a version of their own OpenGL… this is flawed for a couple reasons that I’ve already outlined:

      1. when OpenGL was designed, GPUs didn’t exist. Video cards existed, but a video card != GPU
      2. OpenGLs original purpose was to be a 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) graphics API …
      3. If you’ve ever used MS Windows before Windows 95 or even Windows 95 before Direct X was released, you’d know… MS shipped their own opengl32.dll with Windows

      You literally said that Mantle was inspired by DX12, which is false. You can try to pivot to regurgitating more Mantle history, but I’m just saying…

      AMD Mantle was inspired by Direct X 12… it was inspired by all of Direct X and the current next gen in development at the time which was Direct X 12.

      take it from someone who literally wrote them for a living

      For someone of your calibre, I’d expect a better understanding of what a driver is then. “above the metal” or more commonly “bare metal” should give that first clue. implementation of OpenGL a graphics library != driver…

      I will refrain from posting any further… this is going no where…

      • Vik@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        This is confusing. There are kernel and user space drivers. For example, amdgpu is the kernel driver (inclusive of KMD, DAL & several other functions like powerplay), RadeonSI / RADV / AMDVLK / OGLP (amdgpu-pro) are UMDs for 3D GFX API implementations.

        Mantle was not inspired by DX at its time. It was designed as an alternative to OGL and d3d11.