Over the last week, the AMD Vulkan graphics driver, AMDVLK GPUOpen, has increased support for 64-bit ray tracing for its Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. This includes both desktop/mobility GPUs & APUs utilizing the RDNA 2 graphics architecture. All AMD Vulkan drivers across all platforms, such as Mesa3D RADV, AMDVLK GPUOpen, and AMDGPU-PRO, will now support hardware ray tracing.

AMDVLK GPUOpen, AMD's open-source Vulkan driver, supports hardware raytracing for RDNA 2 GPUs In Linux

Included in the new updates are the GPU Ray Tracing Library, or GPURT, which will consist of the Bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) build and sort processing found in ray tracing using shaders such as HLSL. This library will allow a standard library to initiate more uniformity and enhance graphics rendering. The new library will also be compatible with DirectX 12 DXR.

The GPU Ray Tracing (GPURT) library is described as "a static library (source deliverable) that provides ray tracing-related functionalities for AMD drivers supporting DXR (DirectX 12) and the Vulkan® RT API." The library is constructed on the company's Platform Abstraction Library (PAL).

The GPURT library utilizes a C++ interface as its basis. The public interface is divided into multiple header files based on their dependencies and usage. Users interested in the full info on the RDNA 2 GPU Ray Tracing Library (GPURT), along with a breakdown of the structure, can find out more on the official GitHub page.

Below is the information for the newest AMDVLK GPUOpen v-2022.Q3.4 update:

New features and improvement

Add 64bit ray tracing support for Navi2xUpdate Vulkan Headers to 1.3.225Performance tuning for games: World War Z, Ashes Of The Singularity

Issue fix

New version CTS failure in dEQP-VK.api.copy_and_blit..resolve_image.whole_copy_before_resolving_transfer.CTS warning in dEQP-VK.pipeline.creation_cache_control.*VulkanInfo crash with pipeline cache disabledRGP test kit failure on RX 6800Firefox corruption on Ubuntu 22.04

Users interested in installing the latest AMDVLK GPUOpen v-2022.Q3.4 update can find the installation instructions here. As with installing any new software, hardware, or drivers, users should back up any pertinent data so as not to lose essential files during updates.

Preparations for the newest Linux driver have been heavily underway over the last several months to prepare for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA technologies, all released in the previous quarter of this year.

News Sources: Hardware Times, Coelacanth's Dream, GPUOpen (GitHub), GPUOpen installation