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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

859 points by TingPing 11mo ago

dcdc123 11mo ago
Nothing to contribute other than to say that article was an awesome read and now I wish I had the specific skills needed to work at Igalia. :)
- robotnikman 11mo ago
  Same feeling here! I never really dug much into the low level graphics side of thing.
- archon810 11mo ago
  Not just that, but the whole concept of an open source consultancy is fascinating. I love that this exists and is a career for some people.
fidotron 11mo ago
> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.
- wronglebowski 11mo ago
  It’s incredible how bad driver support is the ARM space. I was looking into some of the various Ambernic handhelds and their Linux firmware. Despite their SoCs being advertised as having Vulkan 1.1 support every firmware for the device ships with it disabled.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    So many chipmakers and development board manufacturers see software/driver support as some kind of necessary evil--a chore that they grudgingly do because they have to, and they will do the absolute minimum amount of work, with barely enough quality to sell their hardware.
    - ozarkerD 11mo ago
      It bewilders me. Software's gotta be easier than hardware right? Not that either is easy but as a software engineer, the engineering that goes into modern hardware mystifies me.
      - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
        Software is easier than hardware in general but companies generally pay their hardware guys 25-50% less than their software counterparts
        sgerenser 11mo ago
        People repeat this line a lot but I don’t think it’s true. Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc. afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or level roughly the same as their hardware folks. To the extent there’s any difference, it’s much less than 25%. OTOH, there’s a small slice of (mainly) software companies like Google and Meta, along with Unicorn private companies, that skew the average software engineer salary high. Then there’s a long tail of “old school” hardware companies like TI, Motorola, Atmel, Microchip, and tons of smaller less well known companies that all pay much lower than Google. But they pay their software people poorly as well. So if you just look at “average software engineer salary” vs “average hardware engineer salary” it appears that SW people are making 50% more than HW people, but it’s not at the same companies.
        OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
        > Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc. afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or level roughly the same as their hardware folks. This is a fairly new phenomenon and it's mostly a consequence of the AI hype wave driving investment in hardware. Wages have mostly caught up at the big boy hardware companies but you'll still generally see a disparity outside that big group.
      - Melatonic 11mo ago
        Software can always ship a new update for bugs or features. Hardware not so much
  - colechristensen 11mo ago
    They're stuck in the building model of making semi-custom SoCs for enormous corporations and releasing/developing drivers for them in extreme NDA environments. It's fine (or arguably not) for locked down corporate devices. Not so fine for building computers people want to use and own themselves.
  - opan 11mo ago
    I would recommend the Anbernic RG353M running ROCKNIX, or for a more powerful device, Retroid's Pocket 5 running ROCKNIX. Most other options have awful software support and are just e-waste, unfortunately.
- robotnikman 11mo ago
  Glad too see that while Qualcomm tries to keep things closed shut tightly, Valve and their contractors are trying to do the opposite.
- zamalek 11mo ago
  > Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing right by the consumer. I'm not sure if there's more to the secret source, her sauce, because we've yet to see another CEO pull their head out of their arse far enough to see how lucrative this approach can be: consumerism is fickle, fanaticism is loyal.
  - atomicnumber3 11mo ago
    This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.
    - tapoxi 11mo ago
      > They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.
      - jsheard 11mo ago
        > and give refunds so they get a free pass. They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was found to be illegal in Australia.
        nananana9 11mo ago
        They made the new refund policy worldwide, which they absolutely did not have to.
- SequoiaHope 11mo ago
  I also just love that in open source you can call something “Turnip” because you’re not marketing it to anyone.
  - Melonai 11mo ago
    I don't know, Turnip's a cute name and I wouldn't think twice before buying a product which is branded that way (as long as the actual product is cool of course!).
  - MathMonkeyMan 11mo ago
    There isn't a single mention of AI in the article.
- deleted 11mo ago
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- MindSpunk 11mo ago
  Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for <AAA Engine>, have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.
  - mschuster91 11mo ago
    Qualcomm is by a lot of accounts on HN a law firm with a side hustle of selling chips.
    - david-gpu 11mo ago
      Worked there for 9 years, can confirm. I wish that our drivers had been open sources, because we poured our souls into them and took pride in the result.
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  - david-gpu 11mo ago
    > I work with mobile GPUs for <AAA Engine>, have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations. Often when people run into problems with a GPU they blame "the drivers". How confident are you that the problems you ran into originated from the drivers, and not from other sources, such as the hardware itself? Just because an issue goes away with a driver update it doesn't mean that the problem originated in the driver -- most of the time what happens is that they found a hardware bug and implemented yet another software workaround. I am not throwing the HW folks under the bus, either. The hardware is immensely complex and it's not that they can release a new revision every month. One of the main responsibilities of GPU drivers is working around the bugs that are found after hardware is released. That, and getting all the blame.
    - altfredd 11mo ago
      Android has entire API for handling driver failures: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.SubsystemRestartTrackingCallback https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/Wif... Hardware can have issues, but firmware and drivers usually work around those issues. When firmware and drivers crash, you get "masterpieces" like the one above.
- smolder 11mo ago
  It's actually very easy for skilled people to deliver good products when they aren't just tasked with sucking off shareholders. Public trade of companies makes them worse every time.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
  Every major company open sources software that is not part of its core competitive advantages. It’s part of “commoditizing your complements”
  - david-gpu 11mo ago
    Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks? OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.
    - stubish 11mo ago
      I think this is the wrong way around. There might be an economic incentive to keeping something closed source, for example having licensed other closed source code. And remaining in control without oversight also might be an incentive. But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work, making your product better. It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value. Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting.
      - david-gpu 11mo ago
        Speaking from the perspective of somebody who used to do this for a living. > But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work Device drivers, particularly on mobile, aren't evergreen sorts of software. New hardware is released several times a year, and maintenance after shipping is limited to critical issues. By the time it hits the market, the people who developed that driver have moved on to newer products. > It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value Whatever they did would have completely missed the release schedule. It may provide value to people who want to keep using a 10 year old phone, but how does that benefit a company that only makes income when they sell new models? > Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting. This made me laugh. You would be surprised by how minimal reverse engineering goes on in this space. It boils down to the same reason as before: by the time you have made any progress, the product you are reverse engineering is semi obsolete. The vast majority of the time it makes more sense to invest those resources into developing your own stuff. That's my $.02 from having worked for four major GPU vendors out there. Upper management knows what they are doing, even if outsiders don't get it. The incentives simply aren't there for most GPU vendors most of the time.
deleted 11mo ago
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stavros 11mo ago
I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts. They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather than locking it down.
- zem 11mo ago
  I had barely played games for years, and got a steam deck just because it seemed like a cool linux device I could use both for gaming and tinkering. it has definitely gotten me back into gaming in a big way, the experience really is very nice.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    Yes! The Deck is the closest I've gotten to getting into gaming. I especially loved the "press the power button and your game is immediately right there" aspect of it. I ended up selling it to a friend because I enjoy making things much more, but the Deck is such a fantastic device.
  - pipes 11mo ago
    It's a great device, I mainly use it for emulation. The fact that it's properly an open platform is amazing.
  - palata 11mo ago
    Same here! I actually stopped playing when I moved entirely to Linux, and have been running on laptops without a good GPU solution since then. I bought the SteamDeck because it looked like a cool product and I liked the openness ("it's just running Linux"), and I love it. And it got me back into gaming :-).
  - doublerabbit 11mo ago
    I just wish my hands wouldn't cramp on hand-held devices. I've never been able to use handhelds for longer than thirty minutes. Goes for console controllers too.
    - 11mo ago
troupo 11mo ago
Igalia is a superhero company doing a lot of great work with surprisingly little fanfare. Everytime their name pops up it's inevitably "oh some thankless extremely technical low level work leading to impressive/long-awaited features"
- amazari 11mo ago
  Indeed, their work on WebKit, Servo, Mesa drivers, the kernel, and more is seriously impressive! Their customers, Valve, in this case, deserve credit for being good FLOSS citizens (even if they are building a DRM walled garden on top of it :/), but the actual workers are the real unsung heroes. Them, Codethink, Collabora, and other open-source consultancies I might have missed are doing the community a huge service."
  - atrus 11mo ago
    Steam DRM is entirely optional. Blame the publishers for DRM.
    - Uvix 11mo ago
      Valve doesn't disclose ahead of purchase whether a title has Steam DRM or not. So even if publishers don't take the option, I have no way to know that. Which means the option effectively doesn't exist.
      - stubish 11mo ago
        The publisher could certainly mention it in their product blurb or in the additional notes under system requirements, if they thought to or thought the market would care.
  - chmod775 11mo ago
    You can ship DRM-free games on it just fine. It's up to the dev/publisher. Additionally you can get a lot of the benefits of Steam (Proton etc.) even for titles you didn't acquire through Steam - you can add and launch third party executables through the Steam client. Steam is not exactly a walled garden save for some rather light curation of their own store.
jorvi 11mo ago
Really cool stuff! Especially nice to see the groundwork being laid for what could become very efficient handhelds, considering how much performance Apple's M-series and Qualcomm's Elite series with relatively few watts. Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. One nit: it's too bad Valve / Igalia choose to completely ignore the lessons from Bazzite. Bazzite already runs a scheduler like LAVD, called BORE[0]. It would have saved them a lot of work to extend and improve that rather than invent the wheel again. I'm not sure if Valve and Igalia are unaware of Bazzite and BORE or if this is a case of NIH. [0]https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler
- Maxious 11mo ago
  Igalia benchmarked against EEVDF https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353 https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353 Also bazzite uses LAVD by default for steam deck hardware https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/3798 https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/379...
  - jorvi 11mo ago
    EEVDF is not BORE. Well, technically BORE is something wrapped around either CFS or EEVDF. Interestingly enough, specifically for high sustained load situations (which handhelds are likely to hit given their limited power budget), the CFS version of BORE actually performs better than the EEVDF version. And Bazzite used to use BORE, they just like tracking upstream as much as possible. Anywho who is to say, maybe LAVD is indeed better. We don't know.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  > Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. My impression is that Nvidia still leads in power-efficiency when compared node-for-node. The Switch 2 is a miracle beyond anything Apple or AMD ever did with 8nm silicon. Everyone else is shipping less power-efficient raster hardware unless you're super pedantic about idle draw.
rpmisms 11mo ago
It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.
- sbarre 11mo ago
  Huh, I had not connected those (hypothetical) dots, but I could see it.. Or maybe there's 2 next-gen Steam Decks, an ultra-portable ARM-based one that's as small as can be, and a more performant x86 one with AMD's next-gen APU...
  - jsheard 11mo ago
    Yeah, there's a real gap in the market for a relatively compact handheld which can play low-spec PC games. The AMD-based handheld PCs available today are all pretty chunky.
    - zozbot234 11mo ago
      There's plenty of "relatively compact" ARM-based handhelds targeting the retro market already, but many of them are shipping with a pitiful amount of RAM (1GB or so) making them an absolute non-starter, while others (selling for significantly higher prices) run crappy Android-based OS's that will never be updated. There is a gap in the market for a good-quality retro-like handheld shipping with a Linux-native OS (or even just enabling one to be installed trivially after-the-fact, with everything working and no reliance on downstream hacked-together support packages).
      - andrepd 11mo ago
        Retroid Pocket 5 supports Android and Linux dual boot.
    - andrepd 11mo ago
      Well, apparently there's this project I learned about literally yesterday! https://portmaster.games/games.html https://portmaster.games/games.html There are handhelds for less than 200$ with very good screens and controls that can play all of these. Not to mention stream (via Steam or other software) from your PC!
uejfiweun 11mo ago
The Steam Frame shows a lot of promise in terms of letting people play games on a massive virtual screen. But with the hardware, even more is possible. I hope they are working on a compatibility layer that allows 2D games to be rendered in 3D, like the 3D TV of the 2010s. In my opinion that would be a killer app.
- PoignardAzur 11mo ago
  You mean like VorpX?
  - uejfiweun 11mo ago
    I mean like an official Valve fork of VorpX that works just as well as Proton. I have not had the best experiences with VorpX. But it becomes a much easier problem if you have standardized hardware and software.
    - koolala 11mo ago
      VorpX is closed source so not a fork. Seems like they could do things at the driver level.
- FiddlerClamp 11mo ago
  VITURE's Immersive 3D already offers this for several platforms (for VITURE glasses).
- Philpax 11mo ago
  There are rumours that they are working on this, but I assume they've chosen to keep the exact software experience of the Frame under wraps for now. It would certainly make the experience of gaming on a giant virtual screen even better!
- ncr100 11mo ago
  Not sure if this is what you had in mind: Projected 2D views into a 3D "movie screen" environment is a feature of the Frame, per my understanding of their marketing, and of early reviewers' experiences. If you meant, "do they take 2D render frames from videogames and convert them into pseudo-3d or actual 3d where the user can tilt their head to see a different view INTO the 2D game's universe, e.g. see behind bushes just by tilting head", then "no".
_cenw 11mo ago
The Winlator-releated ecosystem already works pretty well, there just isn't a good frontend or integration for it yet. That's what is really exciting here. Gamehub is a proprietary app by a Chinese controller manufacturer with some suspicious behavior and several LGPL violations that unfortunately works much better then the alternatives. Funnily enough their CDN endpoint is called "bigeyes", which when researching a bit was apparently their (failed) effort to bring x86 VR to ARM almost 10 years ago. Some people have "debloated" the app, but it seems very amateur hour to me and the process isn't very transparent (the GitHub repo is just a readme) There's also GameNative, which seems promising, but is very buggy. And Winlator itself, which is a mess of tons of tunables and different forks that I really don't have the patience for when PC handhelds exist today and have a much better ecosystem.
systematizeD 11mo ago
I wonder if they(valve) sponsor servo
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- TingPing 11mo ago
  I don’t see why that would interest them.
torginus 11mo ago
Considering all this work is open-source, could some third party make a Qualcomm Snapdragon based handheld console, if Valve decides not to make a Steam Deck Mini? I really loved the idea of the Steam Deck, but I'd prefer to play something that's more like the size of a PSP or a Switch Lite at most.
- jsheard 11mo ago
  There's already a ton of Snapdragon based handheld consoles, they're mainly marketed for retro system emulation but you can do whatever you want on them. They usually run Android out of the box though, not plain Linux.
  - crims0n 11mo ago
    And in fact, are able to play Windows games already with Winlator or GameHub. Performance is getting impressive as well, with newer chips like the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
    - torginus 11mo ago
      Not sure where they are now, but a year or two ago compatibility with all but the most basic games was quite bad (because of the GPU).
      - robbiet480 11mo ago
        GTA V is running at high preset locked 60fps via GameHub on the Ayn Thor which has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIPlwoAt58#t=14m41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIPlwoAt58#t=14m41s
- ga2mer 11mo ago
  Some powerful retro handhelds support Linux loading, such as: Retroid Pocket 5, Mini, and Flip 2 on the five-year-old SD865, and more recently, Ayn Odin 2 (original, Mini, and Portal) on the three-year-old SD8 Gen 2 (which is one version lower than the SoC in Steam Frame (SD8 Gen 3)). So if we get a native arm version of Steam and Proton ARM64EC, we will essentially already have mini Steam Deck(s), and since you want something similar to a PSP, you can check out the Ayn Odin 2 Mini, it's similar to the PS Vita, but I'm not sure if it's still available for sale, or you can order the Retroid Pocket 6 (available in a few months), which has the same chip, but a better screen and is also small in size.
saborineko 11mo ago
Cool！
koolala 11mo ago
Wonder if later they will get to do WebXR Browser work for Linux / this hardware too.
dmix 11mo ago
> “If you love video games, like I do, working on FEX with Valve is a dream come true,” said Paulo Matos, an engineer with Igalia’s Compilers Team Life is great sometimes. Particularly when your nerd hobbies like contributing to open source connects you with important industries so you get justly rewarded
sandGorgon 11mo ago
the Qualcomm Adreno 750 GPU is a Snapdragon Gen 3 device. This is basically an android device. I wonder why Valve is maintaining a separate linux and driver fork for this. Snapdragon Gen 3 android game SDK works very well...including Windows emulation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g not saying what Valve is doing is not spectacular. But i cant help but wonder if it isnt a more productive use of their resources to mainline this in Android ? Maybe even accelerate the Desktop Android merge (which Qualcomm is pushing ! https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googles-android-pc-merger-incredible https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googl...) Android that is Valve compatible will further Valve's goals of open platforms than maintaining their own fork.
- zozbot234 11mo ago
  If you want to "accelerate the Desktop Android merge" you need devices to be properly supported in the mainline kernel and Mesa stack, which is what everyone uses on desktop. This is what Valve is doing. Google may be merging Android and ChromeOS, but even ChromeOS is far from a true "desktop"-class OS.
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    I'm pretty sure "Desktop Android" is a version of Android that runs on laptops, not a version of normal desktop Linux that can run Android.
geokon 11mo ago
"much of our work extends back through years of Snapdragon hardware, and we regression test it to make sure it stays Vulkan conformant" would have been nice to hear of a specific device that now has Vulcan support id be curious what the ballpark cost and time frame of the work was im honestly surprised the technical expertise to do it (without qualcomms help) is even out there bc this is a space that has notoriously slow development relative to user interest
drchaim 11mo ago
So proud to see a Spanish company working on this low-level stuff
pojzon 11mo ago
I really hope steam machine and steam deck will plow gaming industry monopolies. I want to move away from Windows completely also for my gaming hobby but cant yet fully. I also want to ravage Nintendo monopoly and unwillingness to let me play old games they no longer want to support AND dont want to let me play. I rly rly hope Valve will make it and we can ditch those companies with shady practices.

859 points by TingPing 11mo ago

Nothing to contribute other than to say that article was an awesome read and now I wish I had the specific skills needed to work at Igalia. :)

robotnikman 11mo ago
Same feeling here! I never really dug much into the low level graphics side of thing.
archon810 11mo ago
Not just that, but the whole concept of an open source consultancy is fascinating. I love that this exists and is a career for some people.

fidotron 11mo ago

> This is a very difficult combination to achieve, and yet that’s exactly what we’ve done for Valve with Mesa3D Turnip, a FOSS Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs. Look at that. Something Qualcomm should have been doing. Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS.

wronglebowski 11mo ago
It’s incredible how bad driver support is the ARM space. I was looking into some of the various Ambernic handhelds and their Linux firmware. Despite their SoCs being advertised as having Vulkan 1.1 support every firmware for the device ships with it disabled.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  So many chipmakers and development board manufacturers see software/driver support as some kind of necessary evil--a chore that they grudgingly do because they have to, and they will do the absolute minimum amount of work, with barely enough quality to sell their hardware.
  - ozarkerD 11mo ago
    It bewilders me. Software's gotta be easier than hardware right? Not that either is easy but as a software engineer, the engineering that goes into modern hardware mystifies me.
    - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
      Software is easier than hardware in general but companies generally pay their hardware guys 25-50% less than their software counterparts
      - sgerenser 11mo ago
        People repeat this line a lot but I don’t think it’s true. Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc. afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or level roughly the same as their hardware folks. To the extent there’s any difference, it’s much less than 25%. OTOH, there’s a small slice of (mainly) software companies like Google and Meta, along with Unicorn private companies, that skew the average software engineer salary high. Then there’s a long tail of “old school” hardware companies like TI, Motorola, Atmel, Microchip, and tons of smaller less well known companies that all pay much lower than Google. But they pay their software people poorly as well. So if you just look at “average software engineer salary” vs “average hardware engineer salary” it appears that SW people are making 50% more than HW people, but it’s not at the same companies.
        OneDeuxTriSeiGo 11mo ago
        > Companies like Intel, AMD, Arm, Broadcom, etc. afaik all pay their software folks of equivalent YoE or level roughly the same as their hardware folks. This is a fairly new phenomenon and it's mostly a consequence of the AI hype wave driving investment in hardware. Wages have mostly caught up at the big boy hardware companies but you'll still generally see a disparity outside that big group.
    - Melatonic 11mo ago
      Software can always ship a new update for bugs or features. Hardware not so much
- colechristensen 11mo ago
  They're stuck in the building model of making semi-custom SoCs for enormous corporations and releasing/developing drivers for them in extreme NDA environments. It's fine (or arguably not) for locked down corporate devices. Not so fine for building computers people want to use and own themselves.
- opan 11mo ago
  I would recommend the Anbernic RG353M running ROCKNIX, or for a more powerful device, Retroid's Pocket 5 running ROCKNIX. Most other options have awful software support and are just e-waste, unfortunately.
robotnikman 11mo ago
Glad too see that while Qualcomm tries to keep things closed shut tightly, Valve and their contractors are trying to do the opposite.
zamalek 11mo ago
> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing right by the consumer. I'm not sure if there's more to the secret source, her sauce, because we've yet to see another CEO pull their head out of their arse far enough to see how lucrative this approach can be: consumerism is fickle, fanaticism is loyal.
- atomicnumber3 11mo ago
  This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.
  - tapoxi 11mo ago
    > They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. Don't forget the part where they're encouraging kids to gamble with real money on Counter-Strike skins. They rely on an API that Valve freely provides and makes no effort to curtail. But they like Linux and give refunds so they get a free pass.
    - jsheard 11mo ago
      > and give refunds so they get a free pass. They only begrudgingly conceded refunds in 2015 after the no-refunds policy they had maintained for 12 years was found to be illegal in Australia.
      - nananana9 11mo ago
        They made the new refund policy worldwide, which they absolutely did not have to.
SequoiaHope 11mo ago
I also just love that in open source you can call something “Turnip” because you’re not marketing it to anyone.
- Melonai 11mo ago
  I don't know, Turnip's a cute name and I wouldn't think twice before buying a product which is branded that way (as long as the actual product is cool of course!).
- MathMonkeyMan 11mo ago
  There isn't a single mention of AI in the article.
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MindSpunk 11mo ago
Qualcomm's Vulkan drivers are hot garbage, so I'm not surprised Turnip was seen as more desirable. I work with mobile GPUs for <AAA Engine>, have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations.
- mschuster91 11mo ago
  Qualcomm is by a lot of accounts on HN a law firm with a side hustle of selling chips.
  - david-gpu 11mo ago
    Worked there for 9 years, can confirm. I wish that our drivers had been open sources, because we poured our souls into them and took pride in the result.
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- david-gpu 11mo ago
  > I work with mobile GPUs for <AAA Engine>, have direct contacts with Qualcomm, and the drivers still find ways to disappoint even with my low expectations. Often when people run into problems with a GPU they blame "the drivers". How confident are you that the problems you ran into originated from the drivers, and not from other sources, such as the hardware itself? Just because an issue goes away with a driver update it doesn't mean that the problem originated in the driver -- most of the time what happens is that they found a hardware bug and implemented yet another software workaround. I am not throwing the HW folks under the bus, either. The hardware is immensely complex and it's not that they can release a new revision every month. One of the main responsibilities of GPU drivers is working around the bugs that are found after hardware is released. That, and getting all the blame.
  - altfredd 11mo ago
    Android has entire API for handling driver failures: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.SubsystemRestartTrackingCallback https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/Wif... Hardware can have issues, but firmware and drivers usually work around those issues. When firmware and drivers crash, you get "masterpieces" like the one above.
smolder 11mo ago
It's actually very easy for skilled people to deliver good products when they aren't just tasked with sucking off shareholders. Public trade of companies makes them worse every time.
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
Every major company open sources software that is not part of its core competitive advantages. It’s part of “commoditizing your complements”
- david-gpu 11mo ago
  Exactly this. What incentive does Qualcomm have to open source their code? Or NVidia, for that matter. And what are the risks? OSS isn't this caricature good-vs-evil situation people sometimes imagine, it is all about economic incentives.
  - stubish 11mo ago
    I think this is the wrong way around. There might be an economic incentive to keeping something closed source, for example having licensed other closed source code. And remaining in control without oversight also might be an incentive. But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work, making your product better. It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value. Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting.
    - david-gpu 11mo ago
      Speaking from the perspective of somebody who used to do this for a living. > But the incentive to making something open source is that someone might improve your work Device drivers, particularly on mobile, aren't evergreen sorts of software. New hardware is released several times a year, and maintenance after shipping is limited to critical issues. By the time it hits the market, the people who developed that driver have moved on to newer products. > It is somewhat arrogant to assume that nobody else out there could possibly improve this code or add value Whatever they did would have completely missed the release schedule. It may provide value to people who want to keep using a 10 year old phone, but how does that benefit a company that only makes income when they sell new models? > Just like it is arrogant to assume that your competitors don't already know your 'secrets' and haven't reverse engineered anything they found interesting. This made me laugh. You would be surprised by how minimal reverse engineering goes on in this space. It boils down to the same reason as before: by the time you have made any progress, the product you are reverse engineering is semi obsolete. The vast majority of the time it makes more sense to invest those resources into developing your own stuff. That's my $.02 from having worked for four major GPU vendors out there. Upper management knows what they are doing, even if outsiders don't get it. The incentives simply aren't there for most GPU vendors most of the time.

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stavros 11mo ago

I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts. They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather than locking it down.

zem 11mo ago
I had barely played games for years, and got a steam deck just because it seemed like a cool linux device I could use both for gaming and tinkering. it has definitely gotten me back into gaming in a big way, the experience really is very nice.
- stavros 11mo ago
  Yes! The Deck is the closest I've gotten to getting into gaming. I especially loved the "press the power button and your game is immediately right there" aspect of it. I ended up selling it to a friend because I enjoy making things much more, but the Deck is such a fantastic device.
- pipes 11mo ago
  It's a great device, I mainly use it for emulation. The fact that it's properly an open platform is amazing.
- palata 11mo ago
  Same here! I actually stopped playing when I moved entirely to Linux, and have been running on laptops without a good GPU solution since then. I bought the SteamDeck because it looked like a cool product and I liked the openness ("it's just running Linux"), and I love it. And it got me back into gaming :-).
- doublerabbit 11mo ago
  I just wish my hands wouldn't cramp on hand-held devices. I've never been able to use handhelds for longer than thirty minutes. Goes for console controllers too.
  - 11mo ago

troupo 11mo ago

Igalia is a superhero company doing a lot of great work with surprisingly little fanfare. Everytime their name pops up it's inevitably "oh some thankless extremely technical low level work leading to impressive/long-awaited features"

amazari 11mo ago
Indeed, their work on WebKit, Servo, Mesa drivers, the kernel, and more is seriously impressive! Their customers, Valve, in this case, deserve credit for being good FLOSS citizens (even if they are building a DRM walled garden on top of it :/), but the actual workers are the real unsung heroes. Them, Codethink, Collabora, and other open-source consultancies I might have missed are doing the community a huge service."
- atrus 11mo ago
  Steam DRM is entirely optional. Blame the publishers for DRM.
  - Uvix 11mo ago
    Valve doesn't disclose ahead of purchase whether a title has Steam DRM or not. So even if publishers don't take the option, I have no way to know that. Which means the option effectively doesn't exist.
    - stubish 11mo ago
      The publisher could certainly mention it in their product blurb or in the additional notes under system requirements, if they thought to or thought the market would care.
- chmod775 11mo ago
  You can ship DRM-free games on it just fine. It's up to the dev/publisher. Additionally you can get a lot of the benefits of Steam (Proton etc.) even for titles you didn't acquire through Steam - you can add and launch third party executables through the Steam client. Steam is not exactly a walled garden save for some rather light curation of their own store.

jorvi 11mo ago

Really cool stuff! Especially nice to see the groundwork being laid for what could become very efficient handhelds, considering how much performance Apple's M-series and Qualcomm's Elite series with relatively few watts. Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. One nit: it's too bad Valve / Igalia choose to completely ignore the lessons from Bazzite. Bazzite already runs a scheduler like LAVD, called BORE[0]. It would have saved them a lot of work to extend and improve that rather than invent the wheel again. I'm not sure if Valve and Igalia are unaware of Bazzite and BORE or if this is a case of NIH. [0]https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler

Maxious 11mo ago
Igalia benchmarked against EEVDF https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353 https://youtu.be/wQbiqKUIsMI?si=rT-zMXJkVR6RYG_D&t=2353 Also bazzite uses LAVD by default for steam deck hardware https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/3798 https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-buzz-18/379...
- jorvi 11mo ago
  EEVDF is not BORE. Well, technically BORE is something wrapped around either CFS or EEVDF. Interestingly enough, specifically for high sustained load situations (which handhelds are likely to hit given their limited power budget), the CFS version of BORE actually performs better than the EEVDF version. And Bazzite used to use BORE, they just like tracking upstream as much as possible. Anywho who is to say, maybe LAVD is indeed better. We don't know.
bigyabai 11mo ago
> Much better than AMD, Intel or Nvidia. My impression is that Nvidia still leads in power-efficiency when compared node-for-node. The Switch 2 is a miracle beyond anything Apple or AMD ever did with 8nm silicon. Everyone else is shipping less power-efficient raster hardware unless you're super pedantic about idle draw.

rpmisms 11mo ago

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

sbarre 11mo ago
Huh, I had not connected those (hypothetical) dots, but I could see it.. Or maybe there's 2 next-gen Steam Decks, an ultra-portable ARM-based one that's as small as can be, and a more performant x86 one with AMD's next-gen APU...
- jsheard 11mo ago
  Yeah, there's a real gap in the market for a relatively compact handheld which can play low-spec PC games. The AMD-based handheld PCs available today are all pretty chunky.
  - zozbot234 11mo ago
    There's plenty of "relatively compact" ARM-based handhelds targeting the retro market already, but many of them are shipping with a pitiful amount of RAM (1GB or so) making them an absolute non-starter, while others (selling for significantly higher prices) run crappy Android-based OS's that will never be updated. There is a gap in the market for a good-quality retro-like handheld shipping with a Linux-native OS (or even just enabling one to be installed trivially after-the-fact, with everything working and no reliance on downstream hacked-together support packages).
    - andrepd 11mo ago
      Retroid Pocket 5 supports Android and Linux dual boot.
  - andrepd 11mo ago
    Well, apparently there's this project I learned about literally yesterday! https://portmaster.games/games.html https://portmaster.games/games.html There are handhelds for less than 200$ with very good screens and controls that can play all of these. Not to mention stream (via Steam or other software) from your PC!

uejfiweun 11mo ago

The Steam Frame shows a lot of promise in terms of letting people play games on a massive virtual screen. But with the hardware, even more is possible. I hope they are working on a compatibility layer that allows 2D games to be rendered in 3D, like the 3D TV of the 2010s. In my opinion that would be a killer app.

PoignardAzur 11mo ago
You mean like VorpX?
- uejfiweun 11mo ago
  I mean like an official Valve fork of VorpX that works just as well as Proton. I have not had the best experiences with VorpX. But it becomes a much easier problem if you have standardized hardware and software.
  - koolala 11mo ago
    VorpX is closed source so not a fork. Seems like they could do things at the driver level.
FiddlerClamp 11mo ago
VITURE's Immersive 3D already offers this for several platforms (for VITURE glasses).
Philpax 11mo ago
There are rumours that they are working on this, but I assume they've chosen to keep the exact software experience of the Frame under wraps for now. It would certainly make the experience of gaming on a giant virtual screen even better!
ncr100 11mo ago
Not sure if this is what you had in mind: Projected 2D views into a 3D "movie screen" environment is a feature of the Frame, per my understanding of their marketing, and of early reviewers' experiences. If you meant, "do they take 2D render frames from videogames and convert them into pseudo-3d or actual 3d where the user can tilt their head to see a different view INTO the 2D game's universe, e.g. see behind bushes just by tilting head", then "no".

_cenw 11mo ago

The Winlator-releated ecosystem already works pretty well, there just isn't a good frontend or integration for it yet. That's what is really exciting here. Gamehub is a proprietary app by a Chinese controller manufacturer with some suspicious behavior and several LGPL violations that unfortunately works much better then the alternatives. Funnily enough their CDN endpoint is called "bigeyes", which when researching a bit was apparently their (failed) effort to bring x86 VR to ARM almost 10 years ago. Some people have "debloated" the app, but it seems very amateur hour to me and the process isn't very transparent (the GitHub repo is just a readme) There's also GameNative, which seems promising, but is very buggy. And Winlator itself, which is a mess of tons of tunables and different forks that I really don't have the patience for when PC handhelds exist today and have a much better ecosystem.

systematizeD 11mo ago

I wonder if they(valve) sponsor servo

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TingPing 11mo ago
I don’t see why that would interest them.

torginus 11mo ago

Considering all this work is open-source, could some third party make a Qualcomm Snapdragon based handheld console, if Valve decides not to make a Steam Deck Mini? I really loved the idea of the Steam Deck, but I'd prefer to play something that's more like the size of a PSP or a Switch Lite at most.

jsheard 11mo ago
There's already a ton of Snapdragon based handheld consoles, they're mainly marketed for retro system emulation but you can do whatever you want on them. They usually run Android out of the box though, not plain Linux.
- crims0n 11mo ago
  And in fact, are able to play Windows games already with Winlator or GameHub. Performance is getting impressive as well, with newer chips like the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
  - torginus 11mo ago
    Not sure where they are now, but a year or two ago compatibility with all but the most basic games was quite bad (because of the GPU).
    - robbiet480 11mo ago
      GTA V is running at high preset locked 60fps via GameHub on the Ayn Thor which has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIPlwoAt58#t=14m41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMIPlwoAt58#t=14m41s
ga2mer 11mo ago
Some powerful retro handhelds support Linux loading, such as: Retroid Pocket 5, Mini, and Flip 2 on the five-year-old SD865, and more recently, Ayn Odin 2 (original, Mini, and Portal) on the three-year-old SD8 Gen 2 (which is one version lower than the SoC in Steam Frame (SD8 Gen 3)). So if we get a native arm version of Steam and Proton ARM64EC, we will essentially already have mini Steam Deck(s), and since you want something similar to a PSP, you can check out the Ayn Odin 2 Mini, it's similar to the PS Vita, but I'm not sure if it's still available for sale, or you can order the Retroid Pocket 6 (available in a few months), which has the same chip, but a better screen and is also small in size.

saborineko 11mo ago

Cool！

koolala 11mo ago

Wonder if later they will get to do WebXR Browser work for Linux / this hardware too.

dmix 11mo ago

> “If you love video games, like I do, working on FEX with Valve is a dream come true,” said Paulo Matos, an engineer with Igalia’s Compilers Team Life is great sometimes. Particularly when your nerd hobbies like contributing to open source connects you with important industries so you get justly rewarded

sandGorgon 11mo ago

the Qualcomm Adreno 750 GPU is a Snapdragon Gen 3 device. This is basically an android device. I wonder why Valve is maintaining a separate linux and driver fork for this. Snapdragon Gen 3 android game SDK works very well...including Windows emulation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsQ_-8HV6g not saying what Valve is doing is not spectacular. But i cant help but wonder if it isnt a more productive use of their resources to mainline this in Android ? Maybe even accelerate the Desktop Android merge (which Qualcomm is pushing ! https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googles-android-pc-merger-incredible https://www.theverge.com/news/784381/qualcomm-ceo-seen-googl...) Android that is Valve compatible will further Valve's goals of open platforms than maintaining their own fork.

zozbot234 11mo ago
If you want to "accelerate the Desktop Android merge" you need devices to be properly supported in the mainline kernel and Mesa stack, which is what everyone uses on desktop. This is what Valve is doing. Google may be merging Android and ChromeOS, but even ChromeOS is far from a true "desktop"-class OS.
- IshKebab 11mo ago
  I'm pretty sure "Desktop Android" is a version of Android that runs on laptops, not a version of normal desktop Linux that can run Android.

geokon 11mo ago

"much of our work extends back through years of Snapdragon hardware, and we regression test it to make sure it stays Vulkan conformant" would have been nice to hear of a specific device that now has Vulcan support id be curious what the ballpark cost and time frame of the work was im honestly surprised the technical expertise to do it (without qualcomms help) is even out there bc this is a space that has notoriously slow development relative to user interest

drchaim 11mo ago

So proud to see a Spanish company working on this low-level stuff

pojzon 11mo ago

I really hope steam machine and steam deck will plow gaming industry monopolies. I want to move away from Windows completely also for my gaming hobby but cant yet fully. I also want to ravage Nintendo monopoly and unwillingness to let me play old games they no longer want to support AND dont want to let me play. I rly rly hope Valve will make it and we can ditch those companies with shady practices.