[HN Gopher] GPU Video acceleration in the Windows Subsystem for ...
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       GPU Video acceleration in the Windows Subsystem for Linux now
       available
        
       Author : Fudgel
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2023-02-13 21:48 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (devblogs.microsoft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (devblogs.microsoft.com)
        
       | dharma1 wrote:
       | For GPU accelerated ML in Win11 (PyTorch w/ CUDA) - is WSL enough
       | nowadays, or still dual boot to Linux?
        
         | sxp wrote:
         | I was able to get Stable Diffusion and other similar ML systems
         | working in WSL2 on Win11. There might be performance
         | differences between WSL and a native system. I haven't
         | benchmarked AI in different configs, but my main use case is
         | Rust+wgpu and there were noticeable performance differences
         | because the GPU driver exposed by WSL didn't have as many
         | features as the GPU driver used on Windows. I also had problems
         | with other APIs on WSL such as Optix.
        
       | Fervicus wrote:
       | I want to be able to use IntelliJ from WSL. Can I do that yet?
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | I'd prefer MS to stop pushing DX12 NIH for a change and start
       | using Vulkan.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | NIH? Vulkan was released nearly a year _after_ DX12. And DX12
         | follows a long line of DirectX versions.
        
         | kevingadd wrote:
         | What's stopping Intel, AMD and NVIDIA from offering native
         | Vulkan support in WSL, then?
         | 
         | This 'NIH' (not so as already explained by another commenter)
         | is offering graphics acceleration to WSL guests based on
         | existing Windows drivers, which compensates for the fact that
         | the GPU vendors aren't already offering acceleration - Vulkan
         | or otherwise - for WSL guests.
         | 
         | I'm actually not sure how I would get stable acceleration,
         | Vulkan or otherwise, in a Linux host in any VM. In my
         | experience acceleration in VMWare and VirtualBox are both a
         | crapshoot to the point of not being worth using.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | For 25 years now the standard for 3D graphics has been DirectX.
         | Why would you expect Microsoft, of all companies, to support
         | anything else?
        
         | Femtiono wrote:
         | You are aware of the history of DX right?
         | 
         | Their SDK is old and really good.
         | 
         | Just because Vulkan exist doesn't mean DX is invalid.
         | 
         | Good to have more than one thing. Innovation and stuff
        
           | kevingadd wrote:
           | Arguably without the OpenGL vs D3D and now Vulkan vs D3D back
           | and forths, along with experimental APIs like MANTLE, we
           | definitely wouldn't have a lot of the robust tech we have
           | access to today.
           | 
           | OpenGL's freeform experimentation and evolution with
           | extensions let people test things out in production
           | environments to figure out what worked, while D3D's stable
           | feature set meant that games and productivity software could
           | - if it made sense for the developer - choose to ship a more
           | limited feature set that worked _everywhere_ , all of the
           | time.
           | 
           | D3D also has consistently offered great debugging tools and a
           | robust reference rasterizer, things you simply can't get in
           | an OpenGL environment. As a game developer it's invaluable to
           | be able to swap over to a Direct3D backend for debugging even
           | if you end up using OpenGL as your default. (These days,
           | Vulkan has first-class debugging support too, which is
           | great.)
           | 
           | Now we have Vulkan as the new home for experimentation and it
           | has great debugging and validation layers, while D3D pushes
           | forward on certain new features and provides a more
           | consistent baseline on Windows desktops. For console games as
           | well, you can use Vulkan on (AFAIK) Nintendo Switch, while
           | using D3D12 on Xbox, so each API is providing value for
           | console game devs as well.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-13 23:00 UTC)