KHRONOS Reveal the Vulkan API

KHRONOS Reveal the Vulkan API

| Source: KRONOS Group Author: Mark Campbell

KHRONOS Reveal the Vulkan API

The KHRONOS group has reveal the Vulkan API, the groups next generation API and successor to OpenGL. The API will work on all GPUs, all OS's unlike competing API's like Mantle, DirectX and Apple's Metal API.

"Vulkan is the new generation, open standard API for high-efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs. This ground-up design, previously referred to as the Next Generation OpenGL Initiative, provides applications direct control over GPU acceleration for maximized performance and predictability."

Here is what Valve's Gabe Newell had to say about the Vulkan API:

“Industry standard APIs like Vulkan are a critical part of enabling developers to bring the best possible experience to customers on multiple platforms. Valve and the other Khronos members are working hard to ensure that this high-performance graphics interface is made available as widely as possible and we view it as a critical component of SteamOS and future Valve games.”

Vulkan will have many of the same advantages as other Next generation Graphics API's like a lower CPU overhead and the ability to create and use a larger number of draw calls.

What makes Vulkan special is it's cross platform compatibility, being able to work across multiple OS' and GPU families, which is the major disadvantages to AMD's Mantle and Microsoft's DirectX 12.

The KHRONOS groups Vulkan API will be supported on any hardware that supports OpenGL 3.1 and up and is expected to be fully specified and implemented by the end of this year.

Some of the participants in the creation of this next generation API can be seen below, as you can see most major players are seen here like AMD, Nvidia, Intel, ARM and many game developers and game Engine creators.

One major difference between Vulkan and it's predecessors is SPIR-V (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation), it's language frontend which allows developers to program for Vulkan in more programming languages, as almost any type of code can be compiled down to SPIR.

SPIR is already being used in OpenCL, which it was originally created for, which also means that Vulcan also supports OpenCL kernel Languages. This also means that developers can use SPIR to do both Compute and Graphical tasks, which may open a lot of new options for the API going forward. As the underlying runtime is the same, more compute workloads can be offset to the GPU, or vice versa.

You can join the discussion on the KHRONOS Group's Vulkan API on the OC3D Forums.

The KHRONOS group has reveal the Vulkan API, the groups successor to OpenGL. http://t.co/EM1EK8as4l pic.twitter.com/aP69i1OFVp — OC3D (@OC3D) March 3, 2015

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