Vulkan 1.0

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Vulkan is the response of the Khronos Group for Microsoft DirectX 12, Apple's Metal and former AMD Mantle API to provide high-performance graphics. First AP referred to this as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", but once named Vulkan, the former title was in the past. Vulkan drift and was built based on the ADM Mantle technology which was donated by AMD with the intention of giving Khronos a base on which to begin developing an API that could standardize across the industry (like OpenGL), but Vulkan has evolved far beyond, is no longer tied to hardware design GNC AMD and is able to fit all use cases in all ecosystems, the API has evolved long after they have been reviewed by many different parts. Khronos President Neil Trevett, made it clear that Vulkan is much more than a different approach Mantle.

Among the objectives of Vulkan this design applications with 3D graphics in real time, such as games and interactive media on all platforms, as well as it is intended to provide a variety of advantages over other APIs, providing lower overhead, more direct control on the GPU and lower higher performance with lower CPU usage, being able to better distribute work across multiple CPU cores. It is also characterized by a cross-platform API that relies on high-end graphics cards and OS agnostic features to improve the portability of applications created using this API.

Vulkan 1.0 is designed to accommodate the use cases smartphone, desktop and console, is now an API capabilities multi-threading, with much lower overhead compared to OpenGL drivers and supports shaders precompiled through SPIR- V. Unlike other alternative APIs, Vulkan is a multiplatform and a true industry standard. Currently there Vulkan SDK available for Android, Linux and Windows, although still in beta, AMD and Nvidia have released that support Vulkan. Vulkan 1.0 is not the final version, [CENSORED]ure revisions will come, of course, once the working group has received feedback from other developers.

And what about OpenGL?

While Vulkan 1.0 is at the forefront to handle high-capacity graphics, OpenGL is not being abandoned by the Khronos Group, the developers responsible for this project will be maintained and must evolve. Vulkan is not strictly necessary for all game developers and applications, this will depend on both you worried about performance, if you need help from the graphics card, if you're an API that is more accessible, if your workload can not be parallelized, etc.

 

It has also been discussed adding support for OpenGL SPIR-V and other improvements on that front. However, the Khronos Group has not officially announced new specifications or updates of OpenGL, but is a matter to be vigilant in the coming months.

One of the OpenGL extensions (unofficial) exposed by the NVIDIA driver is the GL_NV_draw_vulkan_image. This extension provides DrawVkImageNV the ability to draw a rectangle that can display all or some of the contents of VkImage in Vulkan two-dimensionally. This extension will also provide functions for synchronizing between Vulkan and OpenGL drawing basically the extension will provide a way to present content Vulkan within an OpenGL context.

Games and Vulkan

On February 16 Croteam has launched Talos Principle, uploaded on the Steam platform using the engine Vulkan. Unfortunately version of this game for Linux is not yet available to the public, but will be soon

The delay is due to the search for the drivers of conformance. These drivers Vulkan 1.0 will be released soon as we know that the beta version of Windows is available on Steam. From Valve, it is also expected to be available soon Dota2 supported Vulkan, also appear in the [CENSORED]ure other games.

Michael Larabel, Phoronix forum writer commented that "as a game developer who had an early involvement in Vulkan had been warned to expect a miracle not expect the gaming performance of Vulkan". This is because the Vulkan API offers many possibilities for better performance and increased optimizations, games and their engines are being tuned for DirectX 11 and OpenGL. It was not until the appearance of the new games or redesigned engines that exist around Vulkan better performance in OpenGL / DX11. This is why the games currently available in Vulkan can be slower than those existing in the OpenGL processor, this while working on several bugs games and drivers.

Although game developers are excited about the possibilities offered Vulkan, it will take time to fully develop. A situation similar to this happened when Direct3D 11 was released and began to support the games, after games started running faster than Direct3D 9.

 

It was already known that adaptation to Android would not be ready with the premiere, which Google signed a team to a specialized team for this task less than half a year. But at least we learned that the SKD will come soon and that some companies have created drivers for Android 6.0 Marhsmallow.

If something makes clear all information material Khronos Group has released is that Google will take full responsibility for their adaptation, not your competition. From each supported platform they are to provide a set of detailed and personalized features. And if not, as decided responsible for Windows and Linux, is the consortium itself that creates it based on feedback received. However, it has been confirmed that Android functions will be defined in-house and also you will test on the platform itself, guarantee the greatest possible optimization.



 

This low-level API give more control over the hardware. It allows the GPU to work in parallel with multi-core CPU, reducing bottlenecks by making good use of the multiple processing threads. The result will be a better use of hardware especially in tasks such as video games or 3D design, accompanied by a reduction in battery consumption.

What has come this day of release are the drivers. They have been accepted over 30 different and some are more in the approval stage. Of these, both Nvidia and Qualcomm have passed conformance testing for drivers of Android 6.0. Of course, this is no guarantee that your landing is close, but opens the debate.



It seems logical that Google will wait until the arrival of Android N, and given the propagation speed of its predecessor, that would contain the software that exploits it well into 2017 to have it in a large number of devices. But manufacturers have already advanced support some chips, such as Snapdragon SoC 820 that will be mounted some smartphones Marshmallow.