Valve funds Collabora to port open‑source AMD RADV driver to Windows

Valve provided funding to software consultancy Collabora to port the open‑source Mesa RADV Vulkan driver, used for AMD graphics cards, to run natively on Microsoft Windows. The project integrated RADV as a user‑mode driver via the WDDM2 interface, allowing games such as Counter‑Strike 2 to use Vulkan without the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It added support for features including sparse bindings, tessellation, task shaders, GPU property detection and improved synchronization, and resolved GPU hangs across hardware generations. Long‑term stability depends on AMD supplying a documented kernel interface, as RADV currently relies on reverse‑engineered interactions with AMD’s proprietary Windows kernel driver.

In parallel, Valve and Microsoft are also providing financial backing to independent developers of the RADV driver to accelerate performance improvements and Linux gaming compatibility. The funding is intended to enable more dedicated work on optimization, bug fixes and day‑one hardware support for new AMD GPU architectures, benefiting SteamOS, the Steam Deck and broader cross‑platform tooling.