nVidia talks Vulkan

[zMeul]

source: https://developer.nvidia.com/engaging-voyage-vulkan

 

you might recall a post I made about a month ago about Vulkan getting final specs: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/508798-glnext-vulkan-api-specs-are-complete-undergoing-final-review-and-polishing/

 

in this blog post, nVidia talks about the key differences between OpenGL and Vulkan

 

Vulkan is currently in its final stage of development and we want to share with you what makes it a great graphics API and what some of the differences to OpenGL are. NVIDIA believes strongly that Vulkan supplements OpenGL, and that both APIs have their own strengths.

 

Vulkan’s strengths lie in the explicit control and multi-threading capabilities that by design allow us to push more commands to the GPU in less CPU time and have finer-grained cost control. OpenGL, however, continues to provide easier to use access to the hardware. This is especially important for applications that are not CPU-limited. Current NVIDIA technologies such as “bindless”, NV_command_list, and the “AZDO” techniques for core OpenGL, can achieve excellent single-thread performance.

 

Command Submission

Command Buffer Usage

Common Objects for Rendering

Allocation Management

Starting with a new API can involve a lot of work as common utilities may not yet be available. NVIDIA will therefore provide a few Vulkan extensions from day zero, so that you as developer can enjoy less obstacles on your path to Vulkan. We will support consuming GLSL shader strings directly next to Vulkan's mandatory SPIR-V input. Furthermore we leverage our industry leading OpenGL driver and allow you to run Vulkan inside an OpenGL context and presenting Vulkan Images within it. This allows you to use your favorite windowing and user-interface libraries and some of our samples will make use of it to compare OpenGL and Vulkan seamlessly.

 

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what is Vulkan?

Vulkan is a low-level multiplatform graphics API, formerly known as GLNext, developed by the Khronos Group and is largely based of AMD's MANTLE API

Khronos' Vulkan is to deliver lower CPU usage and better workload distribution between CPU cores

Vulkan will work on Linux, Windows and Android

 

a concrete release date wasn't set but, I suspect it won't be long before AMD, Intel and nVidia will provide official drivers with Vulkan support

at SIGGRAPH 2015 Intel demoed a working Vulkan driver for their IGP http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/440149-intel-shows-glnext-vulkan-at-siggraph-2015/

[Prysin]

Both amd and Nvidia has come out with Vulcan ready drivers

[LokiFire]

Vulkan The Way It's Meant To Be Evolved

[spwath]

I thought you meant they spoke in the vulkan language

[AresKrieger]

Please be better than directx that would make my day (I don't think it will but a man can dream)

[NuclearPeace]

Please be better than directx that would make my day (I don't think it will but a man can dream)

 

 

Good luck. DirectX is made by a software giant (Microsoft) with tons of resources whereas Vulkan is made by Kronos Group which is just a collection of hardware manufacturers. Not only does Vulkan need to provide enough advantages to be convincing enough for big and small studios to retool and switch to Vulkan, it needs to have the documentation and developer support that will satisfy developers.

 

The only reason why Mantle found itself into games was not because it was better than D3D11, but because AMD worked with the developers closely in order for them to get it into games.

[alamox]

i really hope Devs pick up Vulcan instead of DirectX, am tired of microsoft

[Guest Kloaked]

i really hope Devs pick up Vulcan instead of DirectX, am tired of microsoft

You're not going to get away from Microsoft unless you just hate yourself.

[GoodBytes]

Good luck. DirectX is made by a software giant (Microsoft) with tons of resources whereas Vulkan is made by Kronos Group which is just a collection of hardware manufacturers. Not only does Vulkan need to provide enough advantages to be convincing enough for big and small studios to retool and switch to Vulkan, it needs to have the documentation and developer support that will satisfy developers.

 

The only reason why Mantle found itself into games was not because it was better than D3D11, but because AMD worked with the developers closely in order for them to get it into games.

The biggest issue with OpenGL, is that is it's extension.

Documentation has often incomplete examples, many of them don't even work, or way to simplistic to be helpful.

[azurezeed]

Vulkan needs to be good and be able to make developers interested in it