Intel has recently revealed that the latest Vulkan driver for Linux OS will get experimental Intel ARC Alchemist mesh shader support.
The ANV Vulkan Linux driver by Intel will offer mesh shading to be implemented by the company into discrete graphics cards: the latest DG2, or ARC Alchemist. The unique mesh shading is still under testing though.
The experimental mesh shader has the ability to expand the scalability of the geometry stage, making it accessible to integrate into the engine runtime. Mesh shading can confine the culling procedure in an individual API call, which bypasses the tedious state and resource setup procedure as it draws indirect demands.
Mesh shading was previously seen in AMD’s Radeon RADV driver, which was implemented by the developers into Mesa 22.0. The mesh shaders were supported by RDNA2 graphics cards previously. Now, Intel users will experience the same in the company’s upcoming hardware with mesh shaders being supported by the upcoming DG2 graphics hardware.
Intel’s open-source driver engineers have been working on developing the mesh shader support for many months. After Mesa 22.0-level was introduced, the implementation became active, despite being in an experimental state.
The merge request will be offering thirteen patches to receive Vulkan mesh shader support for Xe HP (DG2). The VK_NV_mesh_shader support is concealed in the “ANV_EXPERIMENTAL_NV_MESH_SHADER” environment and is yet to be activated officially. Intel will not proceed until adequate support is not offered by the official Vulkan mesh shader extension. With Intel ARC Alchemist on the cards, the cross-vendor Vulkan mesh shader extension won’t take much time to be issued.
Via Phoronix