Bas Nieuwenhuizen

Dutch software engineer and open-source graphics developer, currently a Software Engineer at Hudson River Trading in Adliswil, Zurich; previously an SRE at Google Switzerland. Co-created and maintains RADV, the open-source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs in the Mesa project, starting with Dave Airlie in summer 2016, and drove its raytracing support. Before his graphics career he was a competitive programmer, winning IOI Silver medals for the Netherlands in 2010 and 2011.

Notes13

• Co-created the RADV open-source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs with Dave Airlie in summer 2016; went zero-to-first-games (Dota 2, The Talos Principle) in a couple of months, and it remains his main hobby - the single project he is best known for.Jun 2016
• Represented the Netherlands at IOI 2010 (Silver, 655 pts) and IOI 2011 (Silver) - the identity anchor for this profile.Jul 2011
• Won the Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest (BAPC) 2014 with Leiden's team 'Syntax Error' alongside Mathijs van de Nes and Niels ten Dijke, all Computer Science master's students - the IOI pedigree carried straight into Leiden competitive programming.Oct 2014
• His own blog lists his day job as an SRE at Google Switzerland, while LinkedIn now shows Software Engineer at Hudson River Trading in Adliswil/Zurich - HRT is the more current self-description, whereas the undated blog reflects his prior Google SRE role.
• Speaks at XDC (X.Org Developer's Conference): 'World's Slowest Raytracer' at XDC 2022, with the raytracing work covered in the Phoronix XDC 2022 roundup - a public technical voice on open-source GPU raytracing.Oct 2022
• Mastodon @bas@mastodon.gamedev.place (joined 2022, ~198 followers, 432 posts) bio reads 'Linux GPU driver developer, mostly on Radv (community Vulkan driver for AMD)' - his active social home for graphics work.2022
• Competitive-programming record tracked on CP Hall of Fame: Google Code Jam 2013 rank 20, IOI 2011 rank 59 (Silver), IOI 2010 rank 52 (Silver); career prize money $450.
• Describes his origin story as writing emulators in high school and drifting into 'N+1 iterations of tracing JIT compilers for CPU emulation' before AMD's open-source driver push pulled him into graphics - the compiler mindset that later shaped his GPU driver work.
• BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Leiden University, preceded by VWO at College Hageveld; Leiden is also where he competed on winning programming teams.
• Maintains a technical blog at basnieuwenhuizen.nl covering RADV internals (raytracing, VRAM read latency, ExecuteIndirect), writing as both a driver maintainer and an educator.
• A RADV memory bug that let Vulkan apps on old Mesa 'eat ALL your RAM' went unfixed for almost a year until he fixed it - evidence he is the effective owner of high-severity RADV issues.
• Verified X/Twitter account @BasNieuwenh, created Jan 2011 - coincident with his IOI years, consistent with a low-volume technical presence.Jan 2011