or low-overhead API, because they have a more direct path of control over the GPU. For example, most OpenGL drivers must include memory and error management, as well as shading language compilers and sources. Because the driver does a lot of work, it can impact performance. On the Vulkan API, the Khronos Group starts by giving developers more explicit access. The application will now be in charge of memory allocation and thread management when generating command buffers, for example. Vulkan will mean more work for developers, but the low-level API is also more flexible. “As much of the design of Vulkan is being driven by the games engine vendors, we expect to see many AAA games engines running very efficiently across multiple platforms using Vulkan,” says Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group. “Many nongaming applications, such as VR and CAD design, will also benefit from Vulkan’s efficient and predicable performance.” The Khronos Group indicates the Vulkan could also work on mobile devices, as well as game consoles and vehicles. Google, for instance, recently announced that it will release Vulkan for Android. The move to Vulkan should be natural for mobile app developers, as many use OpenGL. “OpenGL ships on every smartphone including Android and iOS, Windows XP to Windows 10, Mac, and Linux.” says Trevett. “Many mobile developers first write their app on a desktop machine and then take to code to mobile devices.” Vulkan won’t be finalized until later this year, so we don’t have many details on the specifics. We do know that the Khronos Group plans to use its SPIR-V (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation) language to provide native support for shader and kernel features. It eliminates the need for a built-in high-level language source compiler by allowing the high-level language front-end to provide Vulkan or OpenCL drivers with a standardized program. SPIR-V also lets developers use SPI binaries, so the code can work with discrete GPUs, onboard processor graphics, and SoCs.
Vulkan & Industry Support
In the past, the lack of reliable support from industry partners often delayed or derailed OpenGL development efforts. With Vulkan, the Khronos Group has partnered with today’s biggest hardware developers, including Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, ARM, Qualcomm, and Imagination Technologies, as well as software developers, such as Blizzard, Epic Games, Valve, and TransGaming. Jem Davies, ARM vice president of technology, media processing group says, “Vulkan is a big step forward in enabling our ecosystem of developers to unleash the capabilities of the latest ARM GPU technology.” The Vulkan API also received a boost from AMD’s Mantle initiative, as AMD allowed the Khronos Group to use parts of Mantle to serve as Vulkan’s foundation. In its brief existence, Mantle found favor with a few game developers, such as EA with Battlefield Hardline and Cloud Imperium Games’ Star Citizen. In a blog post about the transition, Robert Hallock, AMD head of global technical marketing, says, “Mantle has seen acclaim for many improvements in gaming and game development: higher frame rates, reduced rendering latency, reduced GPU power consumption, better use of multicore CPUs, and re-pioneering new features like split-frame rendering. Vulkan combines and extensively iterates on these characteristics as one new and uniquely powerful graphics API.”
The Future With Khronos
“Khronos is fully committed to supporting and developing all of its 3D APIs as long as developers use them,” says Trevett. “Vulkan is the newest member of the family, and will be great for many developers, but OpenGL and OpenGL ES are not going away—and are being actively evolved in parallel with Vulkan—as the release of OpenGL ES 3.2 and OpenGL extensions at SIGGRAPH [2015] demonstrates.” Vulkan is also designed to port easily across platforms and hardware, so the open API should be a boon to developers that want consistent performance for games that run on all different devices. Whatever comes along, the future of open-source graphics acceleration looks much brighter than its recent history.
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