[Vulkan/Support] New Vulkan extensions for RDNA 2 and 1

[Leopard1907]

Hi, last year AMD put out a statement saying RDNA 1 and 2 are not supported anymore stating there will be no gaming optimizations and no further Vulkan extensions suppotr but after backlash from gaming related community Youtubers they toned it down to say "there will be still game optimizations" , however Vulkan status didnt change so much so that RDNA 2 and 1 didnt get VK_EXT_descriptor_heap support in extended Vulkan support driver branch, despite that extension requiring basically no new hw capabilities or anything.

I know there was a KMD split that made put RDNA 2 and 1 on older KMD , but why UMD also gets affected by that? As AMD seems to invest in UMD still by so called "game optimizations" but abandons Vulkan support?

It basically fragments Vulkan ecosystem as same gpu's on Linux ( driver made by Valve, RADV, not AMD ) supports that extension (in an MR not merged yet) on same hw ( rdna 2 and 1) , Nvidia supports that extension starting by Turing ( GTX 16xx, RTX 2xxx) , what is the reason for AMD to abandon these gpus?

#90 (comment)

As AMD employee here said extension wont be on older than RDNA 3 but stated zero reasons, i wonder if it is possible revise that stance.

[SixPie174632251]

I have been told serveral times by AMD staff when the 25.20 branch released that this branch split was not going to affect us and was specifically told that the User Mode Drivers are going to be "shared" between the branches but I have found this not to be the case at all. I feel this to be very unfair for RDNA 1/2 users.

The VK_KHR_video_decode_vp9 extension is missing for RDNA 1/2 users on AMD Adranline 26.2.1 / 25.10.41.05, this could potentially affect the future development for Vulkan video acceleration on chromium as in some youtube videos, VP9 is still used.
There is a driver with Vulkan Video decode VP9 that support RDNA 1/2 but it had not been merged with the RDNA 1/2 stable drivers.

[pperucki-AMD]

The goal of moving RDNA1&2 to the maintenance branch was to reduce the cost of maintenance from changes to software architecture and updates primarily targeted for new HW. AMD has revisited the level of support we will provide in the maintenance branch and will port Vulkan extensions on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, support for descriptor heaps is heavily dependent on mainline software architecture updates and is not currently targeted for support in the maintenance branch.

[Leopard1907]

will port Vulkan extensions on a case-by-case basis

Does this mean a high profile app requiring extensions will be the condition to trigger it? Such as id Software which likely wont release a newer title in next 4 years or so?

Then it means status quo still remains the same.

It basically fragments Vulkan ecosystem

So this will still remain the same, sad.

[Headcrabed]

For RDNA2- cards, using linux might be a better choice? Their linux driver is still actively maintained.