Vulkan Will Support Multiple GPUs Only in Windows 10

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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Only in Windows 10, is of course used in the same way as "new CPU's will only work in Windows 10." In other words, Windows 10 is the only Windows OS to get mGPU support in Vulkan, due to this feature depending on WDDM 2.0, available in Windows 10 only. Linux and potentially other open source implementations should get it as well.

Which begs the question, what is Microsoft doing to strong-arm these third parties into making Windows 10 only features? Also, if it will work on Linux as well, this obviously means Vulkan mGPU does not fully depend on WDDM2.0, as there is no WDDM at all in alternative operating systems. With Vulkan being Open Source, I wonder if it would be possible for someone to fork the code, and make a Vulkan version for Windows 7 and 8.1 using the Linux mGPU implementation. With how vocal and creative the anti Windows 10 crowd can be, it wouldn't surprise me if someone were to try.

As the article suggests, this may be a moot point either way though, as mGPU in Vulkan and DirectX 12 require the implementation to be in the game, not in the API, and we all know how ambitious most game devs companies are when it comes to writing code. That being said, if commonly used game engines get this tech built in, maybe we will see it after all.

"Now I don’t know whether there will be enough games supporting such a feature, especially since a lot of DX12 games (and I’m using DX12 as an example because more developers are currently using it) are still lacking multi-GPU support, but these few PC gamers with high-end multi-GPU systems will have to use Windows 10 in order to enjoy Vulkan’s multi-GPU support."
 
Revdarian said:
WTF? wasn't Vulkan suppossed to set people free of Windows?... wow, just wow... such a mixed message.
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The question is not IF you have FREE WILL.
The question is if your will is truly free.

Oops,
Sorry feeling a bit philosophic this afternoon. :D
 
Really not seeing a problem here. Microsoft has to pay people to keep all that software up to date, and they have a bit of a shift in Windows 10...giving it away for free for example, denied them how many billions in revenue? I mean, let's be honest here....they left money on the table. They left an *assload* of money on the table by giving Win10 away.

They aren't saying "If you don't upgrade to Windows 10, you wont have a computer tomorrow"....they are saying "new, fancy features and improvements will be made only on the win10 platform going forward"...and this is after those other OS's had been out for many, many years. Vulkan will probably support mGpu in Linux or CP/M, but where Windows is concerned...come on, this isn't news, this isn't even worth arguing about. If they were suggesting there would be no support at all going forward and your computer will cease to function, then we'd have a bitch-point.
 
Vulkan isn't open source. It's an open API specification that's implemented by GPU drivers, some of which are open source, e.g. on Linux, but Nvidia's and Amd's are closed source on Windows. WDDM2.0 (which is a driver architecture, and defines what a GPU driver can do) is part of Windows, which is also closed source (obviously).
If I understand it correctly, Nvidia and Amd can't implement this on Windows 7 and 8 because Microsoft doesn't give them the kind of access to the hardware that they need. They can only get that on WDDM2.0.
Linux is an entirely different story, since it's open source and a completely different architecture.
 
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HeadRusch said:
Really not seeing a problem here. Microsoft has to pay people to keep all that software up to date, and they have a bit of a shift in Windows 10...giving it away for free for example, denied them how many billions in revenue? I mean, let's be honest here....they left money on the table. They left an *assload* of money on the table by giving Win10 away.

They aren't saying "If you don't upgrade to Windows 10, you wont have a computer tomorrow"....they are saying "new, fancy features and improvements will be made only on the win10 platform going forward"...and this is after those other OS's had been out for many, many years. Vulkan will probably support mGpu in Linux or CP/M, but where Windows is concerned...come on, this isn't news, this isn't even worth arguing about. If they were suggesting there would be no support at all going forward and your computer will cease to function, then we'd have a bitch-point.
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I'm pretty sure i paid my windows 7 license for it. So nope not free.

hey get thise 10 dollars bill for free. i just need those 100 dollars gold rings and a 500 dollar ruby, but hey its free because your didn;t pay actually money for it... NAH let's not inflate the word "free" anymore than the companies are already trying to do.
 
Of course they aren't going to spend a bunch of manpower on what (like it or not) is a niche use case on old versions of windows.
 
Quite often this sort of thing is to reduce costs. Why write a lot of code to work around limitations in older versions of an OS when no one will be using it in a couple of years anyway? If you don't like Windows 10, use Linux, staying on old versions of Windows doesn't make sense long term and you're still a "pawn of the evil empire" ;) anyway.
 
I'm starting to think this isn't about strong-arm tactics or any money BS, but rather something far simpler: Starting to create an ecosystem similar to Android, iOS or OSX. Why is it that phones stop getting official support after two years on average? Because manufacturers don't want to continue supporting older hardware. MS is simply following the system that everyone else has been using for a while now.
 
Honestly I'm not sure why everybody expects windows 7 to get any new features. That's not how microsoft works. Windows 7 is a stable platform that's not going to have any changes made to it. It's mainstream support ended on 13 January 2015. All it's supposed to get is security updates. Not support for new cpu's, new versions of directx, etc.

Now for Vulkan... would you spend a lot of time and money to make it work on windows 7 when windows 10 does it differently with WDDM 2 and windows 7 is nearing end of life? I don't think there is any conspiracy here (though obviously I could be wrong).
 
Master_shake_ said:
a wheel barrel of money a day keeps the windows 7 away.
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I doubt MS paid Vulcan devs to not enable mGPU in an old version of the OS. This was most likely due to development time to get it to work and how much bloat it would cause. The worst thing that can happen to Vulcan is let it get bloated like OGL was.
 
andrewaggb said:
Honestly I'm not sure why everybody expects windows 7 to get any new features. That's not how microsoft works. Windows 7 is a stable platform that's not going to have any changes made to it. It's mainstream support ended on 13 January 2015. All it's supposed to get is security updates. Not support for new cpu's, new versions of directx, etc.

Now for Vulkan... would you spend a lot of time and money to make it work on windows 7 when windows 10 does it differently with WDDM 2 and windows 7 is nearing end of life? I don't think there is any conspiracy here (though obviously I could be wrong).
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Hey You!!!! Stop that rational, common sense way of thinking. We don’t need any of that around here. ;)
 
because windows 7,8,etc doesn't have linked adapter.

linux is still multi-gpu-able with Vulkan
 
I don't think there are any strong are tactics here. Vulcan sits on top of the OS and because of this if the OS does not provide the access they need they cant do anything about that since in this case Windows is closed source. In other words on Windows it requires WDDM to get the resources it needs. Linux on the other hand is open source and they can change the source code to fit their needs.
 
BMDJag said:
I don't think there are any strong are tactics here. Vulcan sits on top of the OS and because of this if the OS does not provide the access they need they cant do anything about that since in this case Windows is closed source. In other words on Windows it requires WDDM to get the resources it needs. Linux on the other hand is open source and they can change the source code to fit their needs.
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So what you're saying is that we should switch to Linux? I like the sound of that.

sadsteve said:
I don't need DX12 or Vulkan. I just need more games ported to Linux!!
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Seriously, we need EA and Blizzard to get on this. Where to fuck is my OverWatch on Linux Blizzard?
 
HeadRusch said:
Really not seeing a problem here. Microsoft has to pay people to keep all that software up to date, and they have a bit of a shift in Windows 10...giving it away for free for example, denied them how many billions in revenue? I mean, let's be honest here....they left money on the table. They left an *assload* of money on the table by giving Win10 away.

They aren't saying "If you don't upgrade to Windows 10, you wont have a computer tomorrow"....they are saying "new, fancy features and improvements will be made only on the win10 platform going forward"...and this is after those other OS's had been out for many, many years. Vulkan will probably support mGpu in Linux or CP/M, but where Windows is concerned...come on, this isn't news, this isn't even worth arguing about. If they were suggesting there would be no support at all going forward and your computer will cease to function, then we'd have a bitch-point.
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Except microsoft collecting private analytics about us for marketing
Or forcing updates against our will
Or forcing ads into our desktop as a means of revenue.

Other than that, Windows 10 is great....
 
not sure if it is Microsoft/Windows to blame here.

sadly, OGL implementations on Windows by device manufacturers (nvidia, AMD/ATi, Intel, etc.) are typically just a wrapper back to the DirectX driver.
I suspect it's more on "ease of development" (*cough*laziness*cough*) than anything else.
 
This isn't lazy, it's a reality of limited resources. They could spend time getting 2 versions of windows' driver model barely working and stable, or they could get 1 working well and optimized. Same time and money in both cases.

I'm not saying I love the plan, or all the stupid things MS has done with Windows 10, but it's understandable from a bottom-line perspective.

<soapbox>
God DAMN it MS. People loved windows 7. All you had to do was add new "modern UI" capabilities for touch environments, kernel updates, device support and people would snap it up and sing your praises. But noooo, you have to give reason after fracking reason for people to balk and think about staying with windows 7 or fleeing to Linux.
The actual capabilities of Win10 are great. All the sneaky crap and removal of control of our own systems is not.
</soapbox>

All that aside, I'm enjoying an Old Rasputin Stout in honor of St. Patty's day. Yes, a Russian Imperial Stout for an Irish Saint. They'd understand.
 
did they give a reason why? I'm just curious if there's some technical reason why it wouldn't work with windows 7 or is it mainly microsoft paying the developers some $$$$ to force it on windows 10.
Because given microsoft's history, i'd tend to lean towards the $$$$ theory.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Which begs the question, what is Microsoft doing to strong-arm these third parties into making Windows 10 only features?
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Well, considering that they actually strong-armed OEMs to do not include BeOS, which Be Inc was giving away for free to any OEM that requested it, I would not be surprised that they did something similar to anyone else...
 
PhaseNoise said:
This isn't lazy, it's a reality of limited resources. They could spend time getting 2 versions of windows' driver model barely working and stable, or they could get 1 working well and optimized. Same time and money in both cases.
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naw, it's lazy, nvidia has the resources and they already have multiple versions anyways.

PhaseNoise said:
I'm not saying I love the plan, or all the stupid things MS has done with Windows 10, but it's understandable from a bottom-line perspective.

<soapbox>
God DAMN it MS. People loved windows 7. All you had to do was add new "modern UI" capabilities for touch environments, kernel updates, device support and people would snap it up and sing your praises. But noooo, you have to give reason after fracking reason for people to balk and think about staying with windows 7 or fleeing to Linux.
The actual capabilities of Win10 are great. All the sneaky crap and removal of control of our own systems is not.
</soapbox>
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yup, I still use W7 (if it ain't broke...don't break it w/ win10) :D

PhaseNoise said:
All that aside, I'm enjoying an Old Rasputin Stout in honor of St. Patty's day. Yes, a Russian Imperial Stout for an Irish Saint. They'd understand.
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nice
 
HeadRusch said:
Really not seeing a problem here. Microsoft has to pay people to keep all that software up to date, and they have a bit of a shift in Windows 10...giving it away for free for example, denied them how many billions in revenue? I mean, let's be honest here....they left money on the table. They left an *assload* of money on the table by giving Win10 away.
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The amount of money they lost is debatable. Most the hard core users I know stuck with Windows 7, so no loss of $ there.

Most the "consumer" type users I know that upgraded to Windows 10, did so by accident. They never would have bought an OS upgrade, so again, no loss $.

I do know several people who upgraded old laptops to Windows 10, making them more usable, but it's unlikely they would have bought an upgrade for such an old laptop. Once again, little/no $ loss.

Without the free upgrade, most the people would still be using Windows 7 or 8, and the installed base of Windows 10 would be a fraction of what it is.

FYI: I hedged my bets by creating a copy of the system drive on my home systems and upgrading the copy. This created a virtual Windows 10 license for the systems that I can use to do a fresh install later, if I ever decide to upgrade them to 10. :D
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Except microsoft collecting private analytics about us for marketing
Or forcing updates against our will
Or forcing ads into our desktop as a means of revenue.

Other than that, Windows 10 is great....
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Still think they should have made a free version with all this stuff, and left the pro version with all this stuff turned off.
 
So Windows 10 and Linux get mGPU support, which will probably never eventuate anyway, but Windows 7 will not.

It's all playing out exactly how I thought it would, the same happened to XP and Vista. People expect that Microsoft's continued support of legacy OS's until their expiry date means everything will be fine until that date, rarely is this the case, application and driver support drops off well before the operating system's expiry date.
 
The WDDM driver model before 2.0 was single threaded, and re-written in 2.0 to be support multiple threads as part of DirectX 12. As such, Windows operating systems that don't support WDDM 2.0, can't support the multi-threaded model of DirectX 12. In the same way any graphics api that uses the WDDM model say Vulkan, has the same restrictions placed upon it.

As the different flavours of Linux do not use the WDDM model they are not restricted by it, but rather restricted by the Linux driver model.
 
SvenBent said:
I'm pretty sure i paid my windows 7 license for it. So nope not free.
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..and in that license nowhere is it implied the OS will be supported to infinity. All software has end of life, and Windows 7 and 8 and Xp and 2000 and so on have all reached theirs. Your computer still works as good, if not better, than the day you first booted it. But that new video card or chip or API? That will require you move to a new OS. I mean if someone was running Win XP and complaining about this, would you be sympathetic? What about DOS?

hey get thise 10 dollars bill for free. i just need those 100 dollars gold rings and a 500 dollar ruby, but hey its free because your didn;t pay actually money for it... NAH let's not inflate the word "free" anymore than the companies are already trying to do.
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..........ok dude I gotta be honest I am struggling with this tirade here.......I think I want to maybe cheer you on, kinda not sure....um.....so you win, and we shake on it. Solid. But you know, you're still upgrading to Win10. Maybe mGPU will be supported under Linux, SteamOS....or just get Win10 and drink the Kool Aid.
 
lyme said:
The WDDM driver model before 2.0 was single threaded, and re-written in 2.0 to be support multiple threads as part of DirectX 12. As such, Windows operating systems that don't support WDDM 2.0, can't support the multi-threaded model of DirectX 12. In the same way any graphics api that uses the WDDM model say Vulkan, has the same restrictions placed upon it.

As the different flavours of Linux do not use the WDDM model they are not restricted by it, but rather restricted by the Linux driver model.
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I know it's cool to hate on Windows 10, but here's an example of a improvement in 10 and people are getting ruffled up by the fact the a new OS does supports something older ones don't? That's silly. Windows 7 is 8 years old now, it's going to age out like ever older version of a software product does.
 
Revdarian said:
WTF? wasn't Vulkan suppossed to set people free of Windows?... wow, just wow... such a mixed message.
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It does. They're talking about win10 being the only version of windows to support mGPU. mGPU can still work with Linux.

As others have noted though the real development bottleneck here is the developers themselves who must do all the heavy lifting to make mGPU work. The good news is so long as they start developing the game with mGPU in mind from the get go the developer, or the middleware they're using, should be able to pull mGPU without any massive issues.

RealBeast said:
So WIndows 7 is okay? :eek:
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No. But that has nothing to do with Vulkan or the Khronos group. That is MS's fault.
 
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