NVIDIA has published new Vulkan beta driver builds for Windows and Linux that introduce VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16 for BFloat16 “BF16” support within shaders.
Last week The Khronos Group released Vulkan 1.4.311 with this new extension for BFloat16. Brain Float 16 operations are now allowed within shaders with this cross-vendor extension and the associated SPIR-V SPV_KHR_bfloat16. This BFloat16 extension should prove particularly useful for modern GPUs and software supporting Vulkan-accelerated machine learning / AI.
Now available is the NVIDIA 570.123.07 Linux driver build and the Windows 572.91 driver as part of their Vulkan beta program for supporting the KHR_shader_bfloat16 extension. These latest NVIDIA Vulkan beta driver builds can be downloaded from developer.nvidia.com.
Though in beta form, this makes NVIDIA now the first vendor shipping Vulkan drivers with BF16 support. The only other Vulkan driver I have seen so far prepping for BF16 support is this Mesa merge request for Intel prepping VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16 support for their ANV Vulkan driver along with the necessary SPIR-V and NIR changes. That code has yet to be merged to Mesa Git. With time the other prominent drivers like RADV will presumably be advertising BFloat16 support.
