- AMD RADV drivers are now capable of utilizing the mesh shading technology and it is merged into the upcoming Mesa 22.3 release.
- Mesh shading is a four-year-old technology that enables GPUs to handle much heavier geometries without a performance penalty.
- Mesa 22.3 is expected to land in the fourth quarter of this year with the AMD Radeon Vulcan drivers, supporting mesh shaders.
The drivers for current GPUs and their specific features are getting improved thanks to the continuous development of the drivers and libraries. Now, AMD Radeon GPUs are to receive mesh shader extension support in Linux, the technology that aims to squeeze extra performance out of the GPU.
Better performance in complex geometry
Last week, Vulkan 1.3.226 came with VK_EXT_mesh_shader support. Mesh shading is a technology in the GPU computing pipeline that drastically improves the performance of the GPU in scenes that include very complex geometry. It was ready a few years ago, however, it is not widely used in current games yet due to their long development process.
As Vulkan 1.3.226 lands the mesh shading support, the GPU drivers are also activating the support for it. Nvidia and Intel have readied the drivers for mesh shading; now AMD RADV makes its move as well.
AMD Radeon RADV driver’s mesh shader support is now merged in the Mesa 22.3 library, which is expected to be released in the last quarter of this year. The technology requires RDNA2-based GPUs, Radeon RX 6000 series. It is expected to improve the performance in games where the developers take advantage of mesh shading, or you can expect much more complex scenes without a performance penalty as well.