Vulkan API in Galaxy S7 and Adreno 4xx

[YellowDart]

Samsung isn't a charity. They make engineering decisions based on what will make them money.

Statistically speaking, the hundreds of people interested in running Dolphin on their phone are not a large part of the millions of people who bought Galaxy S6 phones, or are interested in an S7.

Generally speaking, most people who are not interested in running Dolphin on their phones also don't know what a "Vulkan" is.

Adding driver support for things is not free; it costs developer time, and developers are not low-wage jobs.

Samsung is not likely to go back and add major new features that only very few people would even notice, for a phone they won't even be selling 3 months from now. Maybe they will! But I wouldn't take "Apple did it" as a benchmark of likelihood. The benchmark is "will it make Samsung money?" And the answer is "probably not."

[Nintonito]

(03-01-2016, 04:57 AM)YellowDart Wrote: Samsung isn't a charity. They make engineering decisions based on what will make them money.

Statistically speaking, the hundreds of people interested in running Dolphin on their phone are not a large part of the millions of people who bought Galaxy S6 phones, or are interested in an S7.

Generally speaking, most people who are not interested in running Dolphin on their phones also don't know what a "Vulkan" is.

Adding driver support for things is not free; it costs developer time, and developers are not low-wage jobs.

Samsung is not likely to go back and add major new features that only very few people would even notice, for a phone they won't even be selling 3 months from now. Maybe they will! But I wouldn't take "Apple did it" as a benchmark of likelihood. The benchmark is "will it make Samsung money?" And the answer is "probably not."

Um,  drivers are maintained by ARM for the Mali GPU, not Samsung.  The driver will be provided, that is not a question.  In fact I would go as far as to say the S6 will probably see the driver update,  as exynos variants have previously seen such  advancements.  For example,  AEP support was provided to all devices in the 5.1 update, purely because on the exynos side Samsung is very pro active with updating firmware.

[YellowDart]

We're discussing the whether or not the S6 is likely to get Vulkan.

If you think Samsung gets drivers for free and doesn't have to spend any time or development effort validating them, or the devices that run them, you're mistaken.

If you agree that they have to spend effort to make it work, but disagree with the idea that this is not likely to happen because there is little to no financial incentive for them to do it, I don't know what to tell you.

I hope the S6 does get Vulkan, don't get me wrong. It's just not likely.

[Nintonito]

(03-01-2016, 11:48 AM)YellowDart Wrote: We're discussing the whether or not the S6 is likely to get Vulkan.  

If you think Samsung gets drivers for free and doesn't have to spend any time or development effort validating them, or the devices that run them, you're mistaken.

If you agree that they have to spend effort to make it work, but disagree with the idea that this is not likely to happen because there is little to no financial incentive for them to do it, I don't know what to tell you.

I hope the S6 does get Vulkan, don't get me wrong. It's just not likely.

You are greatly mistaken as to the amount of effort required on samsung's part to make this happen.  It's a driver update.  Same as any old Nvidia or AMD update on your computer.  Samsung is simply loading the newest version of the driver provided by ARM.  This is done as a service to those that license and ship their GPU hardware.  ARM is not going to be asking for extra money for these drivers,  they are provided as an ongoing incentive to continue using the hardware.  The same way OEM's provide software updates to encourage brand and device loyalty. When ARM ships r10p0 or whatever revision finally adds Vulkan,  Samsung can and will very easily update the drivers as they tend to do quite often.

[Helios]

fucking lol