On Mon, Nov 3, 2025 at 4:09 AM ☺︎□︎■︎♋︎⧫︎♒︎♋︎■︎ <[email protected]> wrote: > > I know the freedreno turnip docs say that there are no plans for supporting > 5xx gpus and lower. I want to ask about why that is. > Is there some form of major architectural change between 5xx and 6xx that > makes 5xx support take too much work?
Yes. a6xx adds support for bindless descriptors. Using bindless descriptors entails completely changing how descriptor handling works in the driver, as without bindless descriptors a lot more has to be emulated in the driver. Our whole strategy for handling input attachments also falls apart if you only have the old bindful descriptors and you'd have to do something completely different. This is the main hurdle for any a5xx Vulkan driver, and it also means VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing and Vulkan 1.2 are impossible on a5xx. There are also significant changes in how draw states work which make emitting commands much more awkward on a5xx. There are probably other things I'm forgetting about here too. That's not to say that it's impossible, just that it requires someone with a lot of expertise to rewrite significant parts of the driver and no one currently working on turnip is particularly keen on it as the reward is not worth it. Connor > Is there simply not enough people willing to develop/test the drivers to make > support available? Is there some other reason that I can't really think of > right now? > Another related question: Is there any way to have vulkan support on an > adreno 5xx gpu at all on (normal)* Linux distros? I know on custom > android-based systems there are drivers that can provide vulkan 1.1 > support**, so the hardware is at least capable of support. I mainly ask this > because I had an admittedly deranged idea to potentially make an old phone of > mine act more like a mini computer by running an arm-based linux os on it, > but I would prefer to still have vulkan support. > I understand if you aren't able to fully answer some (or all) of the > questions I asked, and I'm sorry if this is technically the wrong place to > ask. > > *Normal as in more desktop like, and less android/chromeos/ios like. > **This might depend on the device though. The OGL/VK driver I found is under > the "LG G5" category, and I can't safely assume that this would 100% work on > other hardware.
