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Khronos Group Announces Release of Vulkan 1.0 (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Vulkan 1.0 was released this morning as a surprise for those looking towards a high-performance, cross-platform (everyone but Apple) API. In a lengthy overview of Vulkan 1.0, the stage is set for making Vulkan what it's been talked up to be, but it's not there yet for end-users to fully enjoy: NVIDIA has conformant drivers out for major platforms, AMD doesn't have any conformant driver yet, and Intel only has a conformant Linux driver. The lone launch title for Vulkan 1.0 is Talos Principle, but don't expect it to perform better than the OpenGL port at this time. While it's easy for many game developers to port to Vulkan, it will require significant investment to make the engines really much faster than their OpenGL/DirectX11-geared code-bases while new games should be much better from the start when designed around this lower-level API. The spec will be available at Khronos.org and the Vulkan SDK is available from LunarG.com.
Salamander Group announces release of Superfish 1.0
Superfish 1.0 was released this morning as a surprise for those looking towards a high-level, cross-species (everyone but Apple) RGB.
That makes about as much sense, I guess.
It's nVidia that has no drivers actually, but who would've care...
Didn't AMD tell long and wide that they would support Vulkan like a mother supporting her child?
"Vulkan is derived from and built upon components of AMD's Mantle API, which was donated by AMD to Khronos with the intent of giving Khronos a foundation on which to begin developing a low-level API that they could standardize across the industry, much like OpenGL."
The driver should have been ready yesterday.
As a developer working with OpenGL, I think that Vulcan is what OpenGL 3/4 should have been.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
But if Phoronix covers it, must be important! But why is it so hard to reveal that this is some sort of graphics library in like... the first sentence?
Oh wonderful. Another new made-up word. The AC's summary could and should have simply said, "NVIDIA has drivers that conform to the Vulkan spec." Why the need to make up a new word?
I've noticed the related, made-up word, "performant" has become common lately. English is a messed up language as it is. Let's not make it even worse!
I post this in the finest of our Slashdot traditions.
Intel has already published open source Vulkan support in a new Mesa branch: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/m...
Nvidia also has Linux Vulkan support in its newest beta driver.
AMD... uh... has a beta driver for Windows. Not even an announcement of Linux support. Yeah, so much for AMD having an insurmountable lead or anything.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Vulkan gives the programmer more control over the graphics pipeline, but the downside is that there is even more work to do than in OpenGL or DirectX, which already are extremely difficult APIs. Well, I guess smaller studios can always use a game engine or graphics engine as a higher level basis, and then big engineering teams can make engines ground up around Vulkan.
That is kind of evil. Apple was all about standards like OpenGL back when they were at risk of being destroyed by whitebox PCs, but now that they are a big dog, they want to use their weight for vendor lock-in and trying to drive a wedge into the ecosystem. They will force developers to use Metal on their platforms.
So we had a chance to finally have a single, NON-vendor-controlled graphics API, that all game engines could concentrate on and applications could write to, and the tool ecosystem could get on board with. Instead, it will be fractured, there will be less portability, and things will be harder for smaller software shops with more testing required if they want cross platform.
Way to go, Apple. Standards were good enough for you when you needed them.
I voted for Kang.
PHAH.
Like I'm going to blindly click some bogus link from some place calling themselves "phoronix".
Give us a link to the story from some source of reputable technical reporting, like Forbes.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I just hope they don't decide to include the Kardashian's
Maybe I'm confusing this with stack overflow, but lets assume I have a nvidia card (or its the future, and I have any card that supports this), I have Debian (or a derivative, such as Mint) or Fedora, and I have a demo program written to use the Vulkan API.
What do I need to type to get all them libraries on my box?
Another irrelevant comment from some user that has to let "everyone" know that they don't care about the story so much that they took the time to comment on it.
Absolutely irrelevant xkcd. Vulkan isn't a competing standard. Vulkan is a mirror to Direct X, which, as you may have fucking noticed, is not available outside of goddamned Windows. Pretend there was no USB, but there was Lightning, and Androids all had a giant power cable hookup and a massive serial port on the back and you had to configure your RS232 port on your computer to transfer data- would you need USB in that world? Well we sure as fuck need Vulkan.
There are more mobile Vulkan conformant drivers than desktop. If you look at the slides from Khronos on desktop it is just Intel and Nvidia. In mobile there is Imagination, Nvidia, and Qualcomm with ARM being noted as coming soon. It kind of boggles the mind that AMD wasn't even mentioned as coming soon on that slide.
I've been waiting for Vulkan. This is a huge step for open source 3D stuff man. All those games that use Direct X will now have an easy way to be ported to Linux, and engines can be written in ways that don't have to special case open GL stuff. The fact that this also has implications for mobile is also a big deal.
Minor correction. DX12 is an extend and embrace effort of Mantle after they caught wind that Khronos had been developing Vulkan for a couple of years. DX12 is Microsoft's rushed to market, wannabe Vulkan effort. As such, it's entirely accurate to say Khronos evolved Mantle DX12 is Microsoft's catch up effort which has been rushed to market.
I know that everytime a new standard is developed there must be someone linking to this xkcd, however, in this case, it is not really relevant.
Vulkan is the offspring of Mantle, a proprietary API by AMD that was given away to the Khronos Group. As such, a competition between Mantle and Vulkan is highly unlikely. If Mantle stays alive, it is likely to be something built on top of Vulkan.
There are real competitors, like Direct3D 12 and Metal but Direct3D is Windows-only and Metal is Apple-only. Vulkan is the only one that is cross-platform. On Linux and ultimately Android, it is likely to be the only choice for those wanting a low-level API.
OpenGL is likely to stay with us for quite some time but not as a competitor to Vulkan as both have different use cases. In fact, Vulkan is a good thing as it will allow OpenGL to go back to its roots of providing a higher level API for things like CAD and experimenting with 3D rendering. The conflict of interest between game developers wanting a low-level, state of the art API and others wanting something more stable and higher level was disastrous to OpenGL in the early 2000s.
check out the API cheatsheet
the rest of the API documentation is here: https://www.khronos.org/regist...
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This is gonna be great!
While I agree that DX12 was a reaction to Mantle, the language of your post reeks of anti-Microsoft bias. Let's just poke this bear a little bit, shall we?
You say that DX12 is a "rushed, wannabe Vulkan effort." It's equally easy to portray as an effective and better deployed solution compared to Vulkan. What is your proof that DX12 suffered in any way from competing with Vulkan? Hint: There is none.
You imply that Vulkan has somehow suffered from the appearance of DX12. What evidence do you offer for this? In my world competition is a good thing.
Your statement that "DX12 is Microsoft's catch up effort..." is in fact exactly the opposite of what has transpired. Vulkan was released well after DX12. Mantle was release earlier but was never a fully-formed, GA product.
I don't disparage Vulkan. In fact I hope it succeeds and Vulkan goes head-to-head with DX12. Your desperate need to drag down DX12 and by implication, Microsoft, reveals your bias.
It's a thinner layer on top of your graphics hardware than DX 9, 10, 11, OpenGL 4.5 and below are. It's the cross-platform equivalent of DirectX 12. It'll be used a lot on mobile, mostly because it's a lot more efficient than OpenGL and therefore will be able to do the same work with less battery power, in theory at least. It's a lot more friendly to multicore CPUs than OpenGL. It's got an interesting "layered" architecture, very useful for developers. It's far, far easier to develop a driver for than previous APIs, so hopefully it'll improve competition, at least in the mobile space. All in all it's about time.
If you want the low-down on what was wrong with graphics drivers, read this eye-opening account from someone who worked a while at NVIDIA.
If you think this is an "incomprehensible, niche-interest story", why are you here? Is this nerdy stuff over your head?
Maybe you should try Facebook.