Vulkan 1.0 specs released, drivers too

[zMeul]

source: https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/xhtml/vkspec.html - page might not load due to heavy traffic

via: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10035/vulkan-10-released

Quote

 

Back in August of 2014, Khronos announced the Next Generation OpenGL Initiative. The industry consortium, responsible for overseeing a number of major cross-platform GPU standards such as OpenGL and OpenCL, was embarking upon a development project to create a true, next-generation successor to OpenGL and OpenGL ES. What would eventually become to be known as Vulkan, Khronos’s new graphics API would be an open, multi-platform low-level API to rival DirectX 12 and Metal.

 

Now 18 months after the initiative began, today Khronos is announcing that the Vulkan 1.0 specification has been released, and that the consortium and its members intend to hit the ground running. Along with the release of the specification itself, today will also mark the launch of document, drivers, SDKs, conformance tests, and even beta software support. Khronos has never had a hard API launch before – previous procedures were to release the specification and then let members trickle in with drivers and applications – so this marks a major occasion not just for graphics APIs, but for Khronos as an organization going forward.

 

Spoiler

[zMeul]

god dammit! I can't edit the post after I put the spoiler in

 

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Khronos has designed GLNext (a.k.a Vulkan) to work on a wide array of hardware and operating systems, including Windows, Linux, SteamOS, Android

because Vulkan is not tied to WDDM like DirectX is, it will work on older versions of windows too (like W7 and W8.1 and possibly Windows XP  )

 

Quote

Drivers & Software
Keeping with their goals for a hard launch for Vulkan, Khronos’s members will be hitting the ground running on the driver front. The all-important Vulkan conformance test is already complete, and 30 drivers have passed testing. In turn, some of those drivers will be getting released today for developers and end-users to experiment with right away.

 

At this point Khronos has confirmed that Android drivers from NVIDIA and Qualcomm have passed conformance testing, as have Linux drivers from Imagination, Intel, and NVIDIA. Finally, on the Windows side, so far only NVIDIA has passed conformance testing. ARM for their part has a Linux driver under review, and while we asked AMD about a Windows driver for today’s launch, they weren’t able to get back to us by press time. However in a separate pre-written press release that will be going out at the same time as this article, they say that “With this transition to public availability of the Vulkan 1.0 API specifications, AMD will be releasing a beta version of our Vulkan™ API-enabled Radeon™ Software driver,” so if not today then I’d expect to see one soon.

 

Vulkan GPU support:

• AMD - GCN 1.0+
• Intel - Skylake: Yes. Haswell & Broadwell: unknown
• nVidia - starting with Kepler

 

Croteam, developers of Talos Principle have announced that they will release today a Vulkan rendering path - BETA

 

nVidia has released a Vulkan driver, available here: https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

AMD has a BETA Vulkan driver: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Vulkan-Beta.aspx?webSyncID=823623e8-339a-86be-7b39-5ded94310702&sessionGUID=01e2b0e5-b0ba-a9d2-c358-c01bbdeebb0d

Intel's open source Vulkan driver for Linux: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/blogs/jekstrand/2016/open-source-vulkan-drivers-intel-hardware

[Humbug]

I wish people would stop continuing to calling it openGL Next or something along those lines. I understand why they do so but I feel like it creates the wrong preconceptions since Vulkan is new and has broken all backwards compatibility with openGL.

[AlexGoesHigh]

I don't know why they bothered to support XP, yeah that's its platform agnostic is fine but i really doubt someone would make vulkan games/apps that run on it.

 

Also i'm very sad Nvidia isn't supporting Fermi with Vulkan :(.

[Humbug]

http://youtu.be/qZLzz3OOl3A

AMD seems to be hyping Talos Principle. We knew the Vulkan version was coming and I expect both Nvidia and AMD were keen for a strong showing. The first two games will be Dota2 and Talos Principle.

 

the SDK and debugging tools have also been released. Developed by LunarG.

[Humbug]

3 minutes ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

I don't know why they bothered to support XP, yeah that's its platform agnostic is fine but i really doubt someone would make vulkan games/apps that run on it.

supporting XP is a bit iffy. It can work fine on XP but it requires AMD and Nvidia to release Vulkan drivers for XP. Doubtful...

[Humbug]

as expected the first vulkan game is out on steam. And what a fantastic game it is, worth playing even without vulkan.

you will have to join the public beta of Talos Principle in order get Vulkan. Otherwise it will run in DX11 or openGL 4.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/

make sure you have new Vulkan supporting GPU drivers (I haven't checked for availability).

[Humbug]

for this of you who want to download the beta vulkan drivers and start playing Talos Principle you can find experimental drivers for Intel, AMD and Nvidia from below page

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/

[Bouzoo]

Unknown for Haswell and Broadwell? I'm pretty sure they will support it. 

[NateGSR117]

Neat! I will have to give it a try later when I have time.

[deviant88]

Nice i was just reading some vulkan papers from nvidia this morning and messing around with some OpenGL, and now its out

 

I wonder if its already supported by nvidia drivers i dont see the latest driver saying anything about vulkan hmm...

 

Anyway hypee!!

 

[zMeul]

17 minutes ago, deviant88 said:

I wonder if its already supported by nvidia drivers i dont see the latest driver saying anything about vulkan hmm...

https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

[suicidalfranco]

 

 

[Doobeedoo]

Nice. Let's see what will come out with it by end of the year. Glad to see some devs already announced support for it.

[Delicieuxz]

I hope that Vulkan either makes DX12 a non-mention, or that is forces MS to back-add DX12 to Windows 7 / 8. Valve said that they really don't see a reason why a developer would make a DX12 back-end for their game when Vulkan does the same and is multi-platform. Valve is in a biased position, but their point doesn't seem to be biased at all. Unless a developer is going to make both Vulkan and DX12 back-ends, going with the one API that works on many systems is likely smarter than going with the API that works on only one - which is only used by around 34% of PC gamers, if Steam's data is correct.

[Humbug]

I tried it out on Windows 10 with R9 290 by manually switching to the Talos Principle beta. When I switched to the Vulkan renderer it gave a pop-up warning saying that this is beta software and to expect rendering and performance issues. AMD website also said it's beta. And indeed performance was about 20% lower than directX 11 and CPU usage was a bit all over the place. No rendering issues though. Tried it at ultra settings 1080p. Meanwhile many Nvidia users are reporting crashes when trying to use Vulkan.

 

Then the dev made below post. It seems that they have just used a wrapper to achieve Vulkan API calls and get it out as early optional beta. Only step 1 of below is achieved so far. Step 2 to 3 to have their game engine properly utilizing Vulkan are not done yet and beta users will have to await more patches over  a period of time.

Quote

engine design for Vulkan is basically consited of three major parts:\

 

1) Port. Make it work as fast as possible just by wrapping current engine design around Vulkan. Avoid all pitfalls and bottlenecks. This is what we did by now and released as patch for Talos.

2) Use Vulkan for multi-threaded rendering. Our engine is designed really well for multi-threaded rendering, but we have only our wrapper for it - calls to graphics API (like Vulkan) are not multi-threaded. Yet.
That being said, this is the next step what we'll do. And probably release that also as patch for Talos. I tried to do that with Direct3D 11 long time ago (support for its deffered contexts), but it was too much pain and too little or even no gain. That's just one of reasons why we decided to stick with our own approach for MT renderer for that long.

3) Redesign engine for Vulkan. This is the biggest step and can be split in two:

3a) Precache all rendering states (which mostly mean materials in game) up front. This will make rendering calls much simplier and faster. So, instead of deciding at rendering time what is needed for a material to be rendered via Vulkan, do this at loading time and then when material needs to be rendered just give it to Vulkan, via one or two simple function calls.

3b) Precache all geometry, material, textures, everything that is needed for rendering an object up front. This basically creates so called command buffer ready for Vulkan, and nothing extra needs to be set or created at render time.

3rd part of port is, obviously, the most complex one, and it'll take time to change engine design for it, step-by-step.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/#p2

This mirrors what Chris Robers said about how much time it takes to properly refactor your engine to get the best out of DX12. So all in all we are not going to get any useful vulkan benchmarks for now...

[7850OC]

i hope that AMD help to make many Vulcan games for all us

[rockking1379]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I hope that Vulkan either makes DX12 a non-mention, or that is forces MS to back-add DX12 to Windows 7 / 8. Valve said that they really don't see a reason why a developer would make a DX12 back-end for their game when Vulkan does the same and is multi-platform. Valve is in a biased position, but their point doesn't seem to be biased at all. Unless a developer is going to make both Vulkan and DX12 back-ends, going with the one API that works on many systems is likely smarter than going with the API that works on only one - which is only used by around 34% of PC gamers, if Steam's data is correct.

i think the big nail in the coffin for DX12 would be sony adopting support for Vulkan on the PS4.

[Humbug]

^^DirectX12 is not going anywhere. Not for now anyway.

It will co-exist with Vulkan.

[Nowak]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I hope that Vulkan either makes DX12 a non-mention, or that is forces MS to back-add DX12 to Windows 7 / 8. Valve said that they really don't see a reason why a developer would make a DX12 back-end for their game when Vulkan does the same and is multi-platform. Valve is in a biased position, but their point doesn't seem to be biased at all. Unless a developer is going to make both Vulkan and DX12 back-ends, going with the one API that works on many systems is likely smarter than going with the API that works on only one - which is only used by around 34% of PC gamers, if Steam's data is correct.

Windows 7 is not on mainstream support anymore, so not gonna happen. Windows 8... maybe.

 

I'm honestly not expecting much to change. Developers are lazy. Look at how many games still support just DirectX 9. And yeah, Vulkan is cross-platform, which sounds great on paper, but so is OpenGL... and most developers still targeted just DirectX for their games anyway, with OpenGL support typically being an afterthought or not even a part of the game at all. DirectX 12 will allow them to target the Xbox One as well, which of course would make porting easier - so honestly, I'm not really expecting much to change.

[Delicieuxz]

2 minutes ago, Daring said:

Windows 7 is not on mainstream support anymore, so not gonna happen. Windows 8... maybe.

 

I'm honestly not expecting much to change. Developers are lazy. Look at how many games still support just DirectX 9. And yeah, Vulkan is cross-platform, which sounds great on paper, but so is OpenGL... and most developers still targeted just DirectX for their games anyway, with OpenGL support typically being an afterthought or not even a part of the game at all. DirectX 12 will allow them to target the Xbox One as well, which of course would make porting easier - so honestly, I'm not really expecting much to change.

Well, an OS doesn't need to be on mainstream support to receive back-updates. Windows 7 received telemetry, despite not being on mainstream support. Support terms are simply guarantees to end-users that support will last that long - but they aren't promises that new features won't be added beyond them, or that those terms won't change (as they did in the case of Windows XP).

 

Regarding Vulkan vs OpenGL, over time, OpenGL became not as easy or attractive to implement as DX, because it wasn't as updated, and it didn't have good documentation to assist developers. OpenGL started strong, but a lack of upkeep led to it falling back and being left behind. Vulkan is starting off just as strong as DX12, and with a lot more industry contribution to its continued development than OpenGL ever received. Vulkan also has Valve as a primary proponent of it, for Steam OS and Steam machines, similar to how DX12 has MS behind it. Additionally, Vulkan is open-sourced, DX12 is not.

 

DirectX didn't become the mainstay between it an OpenGL just because, or for non-specific reasons. It came out on top because it developed faster and consistently than OpenGL, and had better documentation. If Vulkan is managed competitively this time, I think the outcome between DX12 and Vulkan will once again reflect how practical it is for a developer to choose one or the other.

[zMeul]

51 minutes ago, rockking1379 said:

i think the big nail in the coffin for DX12 would be sony adopting support for Vulkan on the PS4.

not gonna happen

PS4 has it's own low level API; matter of fact, it's even more low level than DX12 and Vulkan

[Nowak]

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

Well, an OS doesn't need to be on mainstream support to receive back-updates. Windows 7 received telemetry, despite not being on mainstream support. Support terms are simply guarantees to end-users that support will last that long - but they aren't promises that new features won't be added beyond them, or that those terms won't change (as they did in the case of Windows XP).

 

Regarding Vulkan vs OpenGL, over time, OpenGL became not as easy or attractive to implement as DX, because it wasn't as updated, and it didn't have good documentation to assist developers. OpenGL started strong, but a lack of upkeep led to it falling back and being left behind. Vulkan is starting off just as strong as DX12, and with a lot more industry contribution to its continued development than OpenGL ever received. Vulkan also has Valve as a primary proponent of it, for Steam OS and Steam machines, similar to how DX12 has MS behind it. Additionally, Vulkan is open-sourced, DX12 is not.

 

DirectX didn't become the mainstay between it an OpenGL just because, or for non-specific reasons. It came out on top because it developed faster and consistently than OpenGL, and had better documentation. If Vulkan is managed competitively this time, I think the outcome between DX12 and Vulkan will once again reflect how practical it is for a developer to choose one or the other.

Well, considering Microsoft's track record with backporting a specific DirectX release to an earlier operating system, especially ones that are on extended support, I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

 

And as I said, with DirectX 12 developers can target Windows and the Xbox One in one go. What do you think developers working on a multi-platform game that supports Windows and the Xbox One are going to do, use separate libraries for Windows and Xbox and focus on two APIs, or just focus on DirectX 12 and kill two birds with one stone, so to say? It is true that Vulkan has some pretty big proponents for it, like Valve, but Microsoft is a much bigger company than Valve is. Much bigger.

 

And no, I'm not defending DX12 or Microsoft in any way. I'm just not expecting much to change. We'll see who's right and who's wrong in probably a few years, but I don't believe much of anything will change and DirectX will still be the dominant API.

[Delicieuxz]

36 minutes ago, Daring said:

Well, considering Microsoft's track record with backporting a specific DirectX release to an earlier operating system, especially ones that are on extended support, I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

That happened with DX 11.1 to Windows 7.

 

It's not that MS would do something like that as a favour to Windows 7 users - but if Vulkan made DX12 irrelevant, making it non-competitive, and that started costing MS brand leverage, then MS could hypothetically back-add DX 12 to Win 7 / 8.

 

For X1 games, DX12 might makes sense. But that still won't address 60%+ of PC gamers. Maybe developers will complain to MS about the inconvenience and added work in addressing all PC gamers, and that could put additional pressure on MS to back-add DX12 to Win 7 / 8.

[Nowak]

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

That happened with DX 11.1 to Windows 7.

 

It's not that MS would do something like that as a favour to Windows 7 users - but if Vulkan made DX12 irrelevant, making it non-competitive, and that started costing MS brand leverage, then MS could hypothetically back-add DX 12 to Win 7 / 8.

Probably, but as I said, don't hold your breath on it.