AMD AMF 1.4.33: Linux gamers benefit from RADV support

The open-source RADV Vulkan driver has been developed to take a strong competitive position in terms of hardware support, continuous optimization and bug fixes. Recently, extensive optimizations have been made to the RADV Vulkan driver, resulting in a significant increase in ray tracing performance of up to 200%. These improvements make the RADV driver a clearly superior option compared to AMD’s official “AMDVLK”. However, it seems that AMD has recognized the enormous potential that lies in MESA’s efforts, and the company could potentially take a “joint” approach to moving forward in the future.

Phoronix has reported that AMD has released an updated version of their Advanced Media Framework (AMF) SDK. The aim of the update is to provide developers with resources such as tools, libraries and documentation to help them utilize AMD’s hardware capabilities, particularly in the area of GPU programming and parallel computing.

The resource improves multimedia application support for AMD hardware and ensures comprehensive support across various APIs. The new version 1.4.33 has added AMF SDK support for the AMDGPU-PRO Vulkan driver, which acts as a package alongside the company’s main drivers.

• Added native DX12 support for encoding and PreAnalysis
• Vulkan encoder became independent of the Vulkan driver
• Switched to public Vulkan Khronos extensions for decoders
• AMF on Linux can now be used with AMD Pro Vulkan and experimentally with RADV drivers
• Improvements to the example presenters

An exciting new feature is the introduction of “experimental support” for the MESA RADV Vulkan driver. This is a smart decision by AMD as RADV is widely used in the Linux community and is continuously being improved by developers. The integration of the AMF SDK into RADV is promising and could indicate that Team Red will change its approach to GPU drivers in the future. However, it remains to be seen how this will develop.

Source: rhutsAMD