Homebrew Discussion About Vulkan on the Switch

[Deleted User]

I was today in talks with a Dev from Mesa / Nouveau and here is what he has to say about the Status of Vulkan

<RSpliet> Natehaxx: same applies. All the work you read on Phoronix about a NIR front-end to the nouveau code compiler is in the anticipation of a shared SPIR-V -> NIR translation. SPIR-V is sorta-kinda the intermediate representation for both OpenCL and Vulkan

<RSpliet> "Vulkan support" is a monstrous task, and the "baby steps" taken currently are insufficient to make it work straight away but necessary on the path nonetheless

which means Vulkan for the Switch using the Mesa Open Source Drivers still in Baby Shoes and i dont think we will get any solution for it , maybe Nvidia will Finally Upgrade L4T to an Working Kernel which i doubt they will do

 

[NANASHI89]

I was today in talks with a Dev from Mesa / Nouveau and here is what he has to say about the Status of Vulkan

<RSpliet> Natehaxx: same applies. All the work you read on Phoronix about a NIR front-end to the nouveau code compiler is in the anticipation of a shared SPIR-V -> NIR translation. SPIR-V is sorta-kinda the intermediate representation for both OpenCL and Vulkan

<RSpliet> "Vulkan support" is a monstrous task, and the "baby steps" taken currently are insufficient to make it work straight away but necessary on the path nonetheless

which means Vulkan for the Switch using the Mesa Open Source Drivers still in Baby Shoes and i dont think we will get any solution for it , maybe Nvidia will Finally Upgrade L4T to an Working Kernel which i doubt they will do

What is "Vulkan?"

 

[Deleted User]

What is "Vulkan?"

Vulkan is an Graphic Api from the Switch which can be used instead of OpenGL

 

[barnhilltrckn]

What is "Vulkan?"

A graphics API

 

[The Real Jdbye]

What is "Vulkan?"

It's what others have said, but to explain a bit, it basically means more bare bones access to the GPU, which can speed up emulation in for example Dolphin.

 

[Deleted User]

It's what others have said, but to explain a bit, it basically means more bare bones access to the GPU, which can speed up emulation in for example Dolphin.

Thanks for Explaining it better

 

[Fadi5555]

I was today in talks with a Dev from Mesa / Nouveau and here is what he has to say about the Status of Vulkan

<RSpliet> Natehaxx: same applies. All the work you read on Phoronix about a NIR front-end to the nouveau code compiler is in the anticipation of a shared SPIR-V -> NIR translation. SPIR-V is sorta-kinda the intermediate representation for both OpenCL and Vulkan

<RSpliet> "Vulkan support" is a monstrous task, and the "baby steps" taken currently are insufficient to make it work straight away but necessary on the path nonetheless

which means Vulkan for the Switch using the Mesa Open Source Drivers still in Baby Shoes and i dont think we will get any solution for it , maybe Nvidia will Finally Upgrade L4T to an Working Kernel which i doubt they will do

I think it’s just matter of time to get vulkan api. Because we already have bootrom hack.
So I think when we understand it more we’ll get. But of course it needs research deeply

 

[shawnchalfant]

It’s a Maxwell based GPU with fewer CUDA cores. Not much to figure out.

 

[DeslotlCL]

It's what others have said, but to explain a bit, it basically means more bare bones access to the GPU, which can speed up emulation in for example Dolphin.

but dolphin doesnt need that much gpu power in the first place...

 

[Fadi5555]

but dolphin doesnt need that much gpu power in the first place...

Yes but I think if we want to reach fullspeed we need vulkan.

 

[DeslotlCL]

Yes but I think if we want to reach fullspeed we need vulkan.

Not sure how vulcan could help that much since dolphin is a heavy cpu dependant emulator, but we will see i guess?

 

[DiscostewSM]

Not sure how vulcan could help that much since dolphin is a heavy cpu dependant emulator, but we will see i guess?

Isn't one of Vulkan's benefits that it spends far less CPU time dealing with the driver than it does when using OpenGL?

 

[Proto-Propski]

Not sure how vulcan could help that much since dolphin is a heavy cpu dependant emulator, but we will see i guess?

Vulkan will take some of the unnecessary strain away from the CPU leaving more important graphical tasks to Vulkan, and AI Encoding/Decoding, or similar computations to the CPU emulators are a balancing act on the Hardware you're dealing with, too much any one way will cause instability this is just one step to make this all more balanced.

don't take my word for it entirely though, I have a very tenuous grasp on Hardware, and Emulators, so my knowledge might be naive, or a portion of the whole truth, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[the_randomizer]

Not sure how vulcan could help that much since dolphin is a heavy cpu dependant emulator, but we will see i guess?

Correct, emulators almost always rely heavily on CPU more than GPU, but GPU is still vital.

 

[Proto-Propski]

Correct, emulators almost always rely heavily on CPU more than GPU, but GPU is still vital.

If I recall wasn't the 3DS Citra Emulator heavily improved by implementing GPU rendering of some kind.

 

[the_randomizer]

If I recall wasn't the 3DS Citra Emulator heavily improved by implementing GPU rendering of some kind.

Hmm, then there's JIT recompilation, which helps a lot too.

 

[DeslotlCL]

If I recall wasn't the 3DS Citra Emulator heavily improved by implementing GPU rendering of some kind.

But that's citra... we were talking about dolphin, which runs perfectly on a i5 machine with a potato intel graphics card.

 

[Proto-Propski]

But that's citra... we were talking about dolphin, which runs perfectly on a i5 machine with a potato intel graphics card.

Still I think it should be considered, after-all it would be nice to have the best possible proformance we can, I'd like to know I can rely on it to smoothly play all of more demanding GameCube titles, just as well as the less demanding titles, plus I'd like to see if we can upscale games to at least 720p 16:9, and I think with Vulkan this could make it more of possibility, can't speak on that entirely without seeing it in action, but regardless Vulkan would add something to the emulator at the very least, which is only good if it isn't forced, and can be toggled within a settings menu of some kind.

 

[AtlasFontaine]

IIRC the Vulkan API steps on DX11 considerably perfomance-wise, so I think using it on Dolphin can make a notable difference for the switch.

 

[TheKrane]

Am I missing something here? Do we already have hardware acceleration through OpenGL?
If not then Dolphin will be nowhere near running on the switch. We will either need OpenGL or Vulkan hardware acceleration to even port much simpler N64 or PSX emulators.