The release of the recent 470.57.02 stable by NVIDIA was a massive success. Following that path of laurels, NVIDIA released a new Vulkan Beta Driver with 470.56.05. Here you will find all the information you need to know about the latest release.
What is the NVIDIA Vulkan driver?
Vulkan drivers at NVIDIA are cutting-edge, new generation graphics and compute open standard API. It provides users with various features in graphics such as high-efficiency and cross-platform access to modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). It was first built, created, and evolved by the Khronos® Group standards consortium. Vulkan strives to satisfy the needs and requirements of software developers in various fields and domains. Be it gaming, mobile applications, or workstation app development, Vulkan has the best graphics features to assist you. Vulkan’s explicit API design allows you to implement it on different platforms such as mobile, embedded, console, and desktop hardware which are running operating system software like Android, Linux, and Windows.
NVIDIA provides high-quality Vulkan 1.2 drivers across our range of products like the Jetson embedded processors using Android or Linux, Geforce and Quadro on Windows and Linux, and Shield Android TV. NVIDIA Nsight™ tools are a god-send for developers as it gives them access to the cutting-edge Vulkan application profiling, debugging, and optimisation capabilities.
Features on the new Vulkan Beta Driver
The latest release of the Vulkan Beta Driver by NVIDIA has compatibility with 470.56.05. It has added features such as DLSS for Proton, an Open GL that is accelerated by hardware. It also enables Vulkan to be rendered on Maryland and asynchronous re projection.
The following features and extensions have been implemented to the Vulkan Beta Driver:
- VK_EXT_queue_family_foreign
- VK_NV_ray_tracing_motion_blur
- VK_EXT_physical_device_drm [Linux]
- VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow
- VK_KHR_present_wait
- VK_KHR_present_id
- VK_EXT_global_priority_query
- VK_EXT_multi_draw
What do these new extensions entail?
The VK_KHR_present_id device extension allows an application that makes use of the VK_KHR_swapchain extension to provide an identifier. This identifier will present operations on a swap chain. This is useful to make references to specific present operations in other extensions.
The VK_KHR_present_wait is a device extension that enables an application that makes use of the VK_KHR_swapchain extension to wait and standby until the present running operations are complete. This can be used to monitor control the pacing of the application. The above is achieved by managing the number of outstanding images that are yet to be presented.
VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow is an extension that allows developers to make use of the SPV_KHR_subgroup_uniform_control_flow SPIR-V extension in shared modules. This Provides stronger guarantees that diverged subgroups will re converge. Developers can utilise this extension if they use subgroup operations to reduce the workload of a uniform subgroup.
VK_EXT_global_priority_query is a device extension that enables applications to query the global queue priorities supported by a queue family.
VK_EXT_multi_draw is an extension that prevents the measurable overheads that are incurred during the processing of multiple draw commands in sequence. These overheads occur due to repeated state checks and updates during the dispatch phase. With the help of this extension, one can pass the entire sequence of draws directly to the driver.
VK_EXT_physical_device_drm [Linux] provides new facilities to query DRM properties for physical devices. This allows users to match various Vulkan physical devices with their respective DRM nodes on Linux.
VK_EXT_queue_family_foreign defines a special queue family called the VK_QUEUE_FAMILY_FOREIGN_EXT. This can be used to transfer ownership of the different resources and data. This is backed by an external memory.
VK_NV_ray_tracing_motion_blur provides support in the API for Ray Tracing, which enables users to get access to an efficient mechanism to intersect rays against static geometry.
Who does the new Vulkan Beta Driver benefit?
The new and developer-exclusive Vulcan Beta driver has various functions and features that give the applications powered by it a brand new and shiny look and feel. While these unveiled aspects might seem attractive to everyone, these are primarily made to target avid and enthusiastic developers. Unless you are in need of the new features that come with the latest Vulcan Beta driver released by NVIDIA, you really should stick to the stable drivers you have.
What are the other new releases from NVIDIA?
NVIDIA has two main series of drivers for normal usage and development. These are the “Production Branch” series and the “New Feature” series. NVIDIA 465.31 was released on April 29, 2020 and was the latest addition to the “New Feature” series. Meanwhile, NVIDIA 470.57.02 was released on July 19, 2021, and is the newest instalment in the “Production Branch” series. Both of these are stables for LINUX systems and are highly recommended if you are getting into development.
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