7 ms·

The main problem with Vulkan isn't the programming model or the lack of features. These are tackled by Khronos. The problem is with coverage and update distribu

by kvark 8mo ago

The main problem with Vulkan isn't the programming model or the lack of features. These are tackled by Khronos. The problem is with coverage and update distribution. It's all over the place! If you develop general purpose software (like Zed), you can't assume that even the basic things like dynamic rendering are supported uniformly. There are always weird systems with old drivers (looking at Ubuntu 22 LTS), hardware vendors abandoning and forcefully deprecating the working hardware, and of course driver bugs... So, by the time I'm going to be able to rely on the new shiny descriptor heap/buffer features, I'll have more gray hair and other things on the horizon.

m-schuetz 8mo ago
Tbh, we should more readily abandon GPU vendors that refuse to go with the times. If we cater to them for too long, they have no reason to adapt.
- afandian 8mo ago
  I had a relatively recent graphics card (5 years old perhaps?). I don't care about 3D or games, or whatever. So I was sad not to be able to run a text editor (let's be honest, Zed is nice but it's just displaying text). And somehow the non-accelerated version is eating 24 cores. Just for text. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 I ended up buying a new graphics card in the end. I just wish everyone could get along somehow.
  - ronsor 8mo ago
    The fact that we need advanced GPU acceleration for a text editor is concerning.
    - ianlevesque 8mo ago
      Text editor developers get bored too!
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - jsheard 8mo ago
      Such is life when built-in laptop displays are now pushing a billion pixels per second, rendering anything on the CPU adds up fast. Sublime Text spent over a decade tuning their CPU renderer and it still didn't cut it at high resolutions. https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerated-rendering https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerat...
      - the8472 8mo ago
        Most of the pixels don't change every second though. Compositors do have damage tracking APIs, so you only need to render that which changed. Scrolling can be mostly offset transforms (browsers do that, they'd be unbearably slow otherwise).
        simonask 8mo ago
        That’s not the slow part. The slow part is moving any data at all to the GPU - doesn’t super matter if it’s a megabyte or a kilobyte. And you need it there anyway, because that’s what the display is attached to. Now, the situation is that your display is directly attached to a humongously overpowered beefcake of a coprocessor (the GPU), which is hyper-optimized for calculating pixel stuff, and it can do it orders of magnitude faster than you can tell it manually how to update even a single pixel. Not using it is silly when you look at it that way.
        Dylan16807 8mo ago
        Sure, use it. But it very much shouldn't be needed, and if there's a bug keeping you from using it your performance outside video games should still be fine. Your average new frame only changes a couple pixels, and a CPU can copy rectangles at full memory speed.
        imtringued 8mo ago
        I'm kinda weirded out by the fact that their renderer takes 3ms on a desktop graphics card that is capable of rendering way more demanding 3D scenes in a video game.
- hyperman1 8mo ago
  No. I remember a phone app ( Whatsapp?) doggedly supporting every godforsaken phone, even the nokias with the zillion incompatible Java versions. A developer should go where the customers are. What does help is an industry accepted benchmark, easily ran by everyone. I remember browser css being all over the place, until that whatsitsname benchmark (with the smiley face) demonstrated which emperors had no clothes. Everyone could surf to the test and check how well their favorite browser did. Scores went up quickly, and today, css is in a lot better shape.
  - aeldidi 8mo ago
    The Acid2 test is the benchmark you’re thinking of, for anyone not aware: acid2.acidtests.org
- Octoth0rpe 8mo ago
  > we should more readily abandon GPU vendors This was so much more practical before the market coalesced to just 3 players. Matrox, it's time for your comeback arc! and maybe a desktop pcie packaging for mali?
  - dyingkneepad 8mo ago
    The market is not just 3 players. These days we have these things called smartphones, and they all include a variety of different graphics cards on them. And even more devices than just those include decently powerful GPUs as well. If you look at the Contributors section of the extension in the post, and look at all the companies involved, you'll have a better idea.
    - adithyassekhar 8mo ago
      There are still three players in smartphones realistically. ARM makes their Mali line, which vendors like Mediatek license and puts straight on their chips. Qualcomm makes their custom Adreno gpus. (Derived from Radeon Mobile). They won't sell it outside snapdragon. Samsung again licensed Mali from ARM, but in their flagship exynos's they use AMD's gpus. They won't sell it outside exynos. PowerVR makes gpus that are so outdated with features that Pixel 10 phones can't even run some benchmarks. And then there's apple.
- Animats 8mo ago
  NVidia says no new gamer GPUs in 2026, and increasing prices through 2030. They're too focused on enterprise AI machines.
zamalek 8mo ago
> Ubuntu LTS This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (where durability is more important than functionality), it's not really suitable for a power user (like someone who would use Zed).
- adithyassekhar 8mo ago
  Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?
  - jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
    Debian/testing, with stable pinned on at low priority. It slows down for a couple months around release, but generally provides pretty reliable & up to date experience with a very good OS. Dance dance the red spiral.
    - r_lee 8mo ago
      You can go for sid too :)
      - jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
        I run sid (debian's unstable branch) on all my systems, it's great! With experimental pinned on at low priority! It's great, I love it! I'm not quite bold enough to recommend it to people but if anyone asks I would definitely say yes to running sid. Apt-pin for testing at low priority is good to have, just because sometimes there's lag when one library updates for everyone using it to update, and you can get unsatisfiable dependencies.
    - gspr 8mo ago
      A stable-testing mix is quite exotic. What are you trying to achieve here?
      - 8mo ago
MereInterest 8mo ago
> There are always weird systems with old drivers (looking at Ubuntu 22 LTS) While I agree with your general point, RHEL stands out way, way more to me. Ubuntu 22.04 and RHEL 9 were both released in 2022. Where Ubuntu 22.04 has general support until mid-2027 and security support until mid-2032, RHEL 9 has "production" support through mid-2032 and extended support until mid-2034. Wikipedia sources for ubuntu[0] and RHEL [1]: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/fcppf7prx10mvntfzjdz2pa83g48ile.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/fcppf7prx...
thegrim000 8mo ago
Yes, this is the problem. They tout this new latest and greatest extension that fixes and simplifies a lot, yet you go look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it. Which means you can't in any way use it. So you wait 5 years, and now maybe 20% of devices support it. Then you wait another 5 years, and maybe 75% of devices support it. And maybe you can get away with limiting your code to running on 75% of devices. Or, you wait another 5 years to get into the 90s.
- exDM69 8mo ago
  > look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it. Afaik the extension isn't even finalized yet and they are pre-releasing it to gather feedback. And you can't use gpuinfo for assessing how widely available something is or isn't. The stats contain reports from old drivers too so the numbers you see are no indication of hardware support. To assess how widely supported something is, you need to look at gpuinfo, sort by date or driver version and cross reference something like steam hardware survey.
shmerl 8mo ago
Some just ignore it and require using recent Vulkan (see for example dxvk and etc.). Do that. Ubuntu LTS isn't something you should be using for graphics dependent desktop scenarios anyway. Limiting features based on that is a bad idea.
xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago
Isn't that just a case of being a bit hardline and saying 'this program only runs on cards/drivers with support for Vulkan 1.3?'
- phkahler 8mo ago
  Now that Moores law is dead, people will be keeping hardware a lot longer.
  - xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago
    I have a 12 year old GTX 750 and it supports Vulkan 1.4.
CAP_NET_ADMIN 8mo ago
So.. like any other Graphics/Compute API when it was actively developed.

by kvark 8mo ago

m-schuetz 8mo ago

Tbh, we should more readily abandon GPU vendors that refuse to go with the times. If we cater to them for too long, they have no reason to adapt.

afandian 8mo ago
I had a relatively recent graphics card (5 years old perhaps?). I don't care about 3D or games, or whatever. So I was sad not to be able to run a text editor (let's be honest, Zed is nice but it's just displaying text). And somehow the non-accelerated version is eating 24 cores. Just for text. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623 I ended up buying a new graphics card in the end. I just wish everyone could get along somehow.
- ronsor 8mo ago
  The fact that we need advanced GPU acceleration for a text editor is concerning.
  - ianlevesque 8mo ago
    Text editor developers get bored too!
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jsheard 8mo ago
    Such is life when built-in laptop displays are now pushing a billion pixels per second, rendering anything on the CPU adds up fast. Sublime Text spent over a decade tuning their CPU renderer and it still didn't cut it at high resolutions. https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerated-rendering https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerat...
    - the8472 8mo ago
      Most of the pixels don't change every second though. Compositors do have damage tracking APIs, so you only need to render that which changed. Scrolling can be mostly offset transforms (browsers do that, they'd be unbearably slow otherwise).
      - simonask 8mo ago
        That’s not the slow part. The slow part is moving any data at all to the GPU - doesn’t super matter if it’s a megabyte or a kilobyte. And you need it there anyway, because that’s what the display is attached to. Now, the situation is that your display is directly attached to a humongously overpowered beefcake of a coprocessor (the GPU), which is hyper-optimized for calculating pixel stuff, and it can do it orders of magnitude faster than you can tell it manually how to update even a single pixel. Not using it is silly when you look at it that way.
        Dylan16807 8mo ago
        Sure, use it. But it very much shouldn't be needed, and if there's a bug keeping you from using it your performance outside video games should still be fine. Your average new frame only changes a couple pixels, and a CPU can copy rectangles at full memory speed.
        imtringued 8mo ago
        I'm kinda weirded out by the fact that their renderer takes 3ms on a desktop graphics card that is capable of rendering way more demanding 3D scenes in a video game.
hyperman1 8mo ago
No. I remember a phone app ( Whatsapp?) doggedly supporting every godforsaken phone, even the nokias with the zillion incompatible Java versions. A developer should go where the customers are. What does help is an industry accepted benchmark, easily ran by everyone. I remember browser css being all over the place, until that whatsitsname benchmark (with the smiley face) demonstrated which emperors had no clothes. Everyone could surf to the test and check how well their favorite browser did. Scores went up quickly, and today, css is in a lot better shape.
- aeldidi 8mo ago
  The Acid2 test is the benchmark you’re thinking of, for anyone not aware: acid2.acidtests.org
Octoth0rpe 8mo ago
> we should more readily abandon GPU vendors This was so much more practical before the market coalesced to just 3 players. Matrox, it's time for your comeback arc! and maybe a desktop pcie packaging for mali?
- dyingkneepad 8mo ago
  The market is not just 3 players. These days we have these things called smartphones, and they all include a variety of different graphics cards on them. And even more devices than just those include decently powerful GPUs as well. If you look at the Contributors section of the extension in the post, and look at all the companies involved, you'll have a better idea.
  - adithyassekhar 8mo ago
    There are still three players in smartphones realistically. ARM makes their Mali line, which vendors like Mediatek license and puts straight on their chips. Qualcomm makes their custom Adreno gpus. (Derived from Radeon Mobile). They won't sell it outside snapdragon. Samsung again licensed Mali from ARM, but in their flagship exynos's they use AMD's gpus. They won't sell it outside exynos. PowerVR makes gpus that are so outdated with features that Pixel 10 phones can't even run some benchmarks. And then there's apple.
Animats 8mo ago
NVidia says no new gamer GPUs in 2026, and increasing prices through 2030. They're too focused on enterprise AI machines.

zamalek 8mo ago

> Ubuntu LTS This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (where durability is more important than functionality), it's not really suitable for a power user (like someone who would use Zed).

adithyassekhar 8mo ago
Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?
- jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
  Debian/testing, with stable pinned on at low priority. It slows down for a couple months around release, but generally provides pretty reliable & up to date experience with a very good OS. Dance dance the red spiral.
  - r_lee 8mo ago
    You can go for sid too :)
    - jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
      I run sid (debian's unstable branch) on all my systems, it's great! With experimental pinned on at low priority! It's great, I love it! I'm not quite bold enough to recommend it to people but if anyone asks I would definitely say yes to running sid. Apt-pin for testing at low priority is good to have, just because sometimes there's lag when one library updates for everyone using it to update, and you can get unsatisfiable dependencies.
  - gspr 8mo ago
    A stable-testing mix is quite exotic. What are you trying to achieve here?
    - 8mo ago

MereInterest 8mo ago

> There are always weird systems with old drivers (looking at Ubuntu 22 LTS) While I agree with your general point, RHEL stands out way, way more to me. Ubuntu 22.04 and RHEL 9 were both released in 2022. Where Ubuntu 22.04 has general support until mid-2027 and security support until mid-2032, RHEL 9 has "production" support through mid-2032 and extended support until mid-2034. Wikipedia sources for ubuntu[0] and RHEL [1]: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/fcppf7prx10mvntfzjdz2pa83g48ile.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/fcppf7prx...

thegrim000 8mo ago

Yes, this is the problem. They tout this new latest and greatest extension that fixes and simplifies a lot, yet you go look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it. Which means you can't in any way use it. So you wait 5 years, and now maybe 20% of devices support it. Then you wait another 5 years, and maybe 75% of devices support it. And maybe you can get away with limiting your code to running on 75% of devices. Or, you wait another 5 years to get into the 90s.

exDM69 8mo ago
> look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it. Afaik the extension isn't even finalized yet and they are pre-releasing it to gather feedback. And you can't use gpuinfo for assessing how widely available something is or isn't. The stats contain reports from old drivers too so the numbers you see are no indication of hardware support. To assess how widely supported something is, you need to look at gpuinfo, sort by date or driver version and cross reference something like steam hardware survey.

shmerl 8mo ago

Some just ignore it and require using recent Vulkan (see for example dxvk and etc.). Do that. Ubuntu LTS isn't something you should be using for graphics dependent desktop scenarios anyway. Limiting features based on that is a bad idea.

xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago

Isn't that just a case of being a bit hardline and saying 'this program only runs on cards/drivers with support for Vulkan 1.3?'

phkahler 8mo ago
Now that Moores law is dead, people will be keeping hardware a lot longer.
- xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago
  I have a 12 year old GTX 750 and it supports Vulkan 1.4.

CAP_NET_ADMIN 8mo ago

So.. like any other Graphics/Compute API when it was actively developed.