Upstreaming a Vulkan driver with a closed shader backend

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Hi,

I work at Huawei on the Vulkan driver for an in-house GPU. It's built on
Mesa's Vulkan runtime, and we'd like to open source the project, so I have
some questions about what upstreaming into Mesa would involve.

We have one constraint: the GPU ISA can't be published. The Vulkan driver
and
the NIR-level lowering can both be open. The NIR-to-machine-code backend
can't, so it would have to ship as a binary that the driver loads at
runtime.

I've read docs/license.rst and docs/submittingpatches.rst. Neither forbids
this as far as I can tell, but I don't take the silence as permission, and
I'd
like to understand your requirements in more detail.

I couldn't find an earlier case of a vendor raising this, accepted or
rejected. If it has come up before, a pointer would help.

We'll carry on with the open source work either way. The question is whether
to aim it at upstream Mesa.

Thanks,
jingxu zhang

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<div dir=3D"auto">Hi,<br><br>I work at Huawei on the Vulkan driver for an i=
n-house GPU. It&#39;s built on<br>Mesa&#39;s Vulkan runtime, and we&#39;d l=
ike to open source the project, so I have<br>some questions about what upst=
reaming into Mesa would involve.<br><br>We have one constraint: the GPU ISA=
 can&#39;t be published. The Vulkan driver and<br>the NIR-level lowering ca=
n both be open. The NIR-to-machine-code backend<br>can&#39;t, so it would h=
ave to ship as a binary that the driver loads at runtime.<br><br>I&#39;ve r=
ead docs/license.rst and docs/submittingpatches.rst. Neither forbids<br>thi=
s as far as I can tell, but I don&#39;t take the silence as permission, and=
 I&#39;d<br>like to understand your requirements in more detail.<br><br>I c=
ouldn&#39;t find an earlier case of a vendor raising this, accepted or<br>r=
ejected. If it has come up before, a pointer would help.<br><br>We&#39;ll c=
arry on with the open source work either way. The question is whether<br>to=
 aim it at upstream Mesa.<br><br>Thanks,<br>jingxu zhang</div>

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