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Vulkan 1.0 specification and SDK have been released

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The specification for the long awaited Vulkan graphics API has now been released by Khronos. An SDK by LunarG has also been released which contains validation and debugging tools for Vulkan applications.

Quite a lot of people have been waiting excitedly for the Vulkan spec to come out and there has been a lot of hype surrounding the new API. Vulkan has been designed to be a high-performance low-level API which can take advantage of modern multicore processors far better than OpenGL. We will have to see how much this new approach affects real life performance once we have drivers with Vulkan support and games that utilize this new API, hopefully we'll get that soon.

AMD have also released a video explaining how Vulkan works in a nutshell.

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You can read the full Vulkan specification announcement from Khronos here and find some docs and samples of Vulkan in the Khronos GitHub. Correction: The Vulkan samples page is currently empty. The LunarG Vulkan SDK will be available on their Vulkan page but currently the download page might show you a 404 error.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I'm a Linux gamer from Finland. I like reading, long walks on the beach, dying repeatedly in roguelikes and ripping and tearing in FPS games. I also sometimes write code and sometimes that includes hobbyist game development.
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tuubi Feb 16, 2016
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Quoting: amonobeaxAlso we don't know how good was Talos principle's implementation of Vulkan. We only know they were the first!
Well, we do actually. According to the developer (I'll try to look for the source later if no-one beats me to it) this is basically a rather quick-and-dirty, proof-of-concept level implementation of the existing OpenGL backend in Vulkan. No real refactoring went into it. They pointed out that it can not be considered representative of what Vulkan can do, and will improve when they actually update the engine to make better use of the API.

EDIT: Ah, the source was quoted by our beloved leader in his new article, saving me the trouble of finding it:

QuotePort. 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.


Last edited by tuubi on 16 February 2016 at 8:12 pm UTC
amonobeax Feb 16, 2016
@tuubi

Thanks for the info bro!

In other words we can see improvements even with a Vulkan implementation made on the fly. That's awesome!
nocri Feb 16, 2016
Quoting: silverphilDoes the nvidia driver support notebook gpus? (i have a GT 650M [kepler])
If so, does anyone know if it works with PRIME/bumblebee somehow? Has anyone tried it?!
AFAIK bumblebee will not work (it is OpenGL only) -- NVIDIA is getting closer to "normal" optimus support (after 10 years ...), they are now implementing semaphores into the intel driver which are required to enable the support. However, maybe nouveau can also manage to support Vulkan soon ?


Last edited by nocri on 16 February 2016 at 8:16 pm UTC
silverphil Feb 16, 2016
QuoteAFAIK optimus will not work (it is OpenGL only) -- NVIDIA is getting closer to "normal" optimus support (after 10 years ...), they are now implementing semaphores into the intel driver which is required to enable the support. However, maybe nouveau can also manage to support Vulkan soon ?

With PRIME/nouveau it *should* be possible
bumblebee(primusrun) uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH and only loads different OPENGL drivers (ikr because i use it), but what happens if i have Nvidia Vulkan drivers? (or if i have both intel + nvidia), so if i "optirun" the game will it work? And also website only lists desktop GPUs!

EDIT:
It will work according to this:
https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products


Last edited by silverphil on 16 February 2016 at 8:51 pm UTC
sr_ls_boy Feb 16, 2016
I created a thread the forum concerning removing white margins in pdf files.
If you can suggest a good tool to do this in linux, reply there.

Thank you
STiAT Feb 18, 2016
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: GuestI was talking about implementing Vulkan into the game, to help the FPS, just as switching to openGL improves the FPS in WINE.
Switching WoW to OpenGL actually makes it run much slower here.

Can not say that, specs would be interesring. I get 60+ fps on ogl and 25-30 on DX on a 770.


Last edited by STiAT on 18 February 2016 at 12:44 am UTC
STiAT Feb 18, 2016
Quoting: rkfgBTW, what if Wine/eON implements their D3D translation in Vulkan? Could it give any significant boost or reduce hitching?

Highly depends ln, they are still wrappers. Considering DX12<->Vulkan probably, they have a very similar way they work.

For existing applications it's very likely a complete rewrite of eon/wine DX API with a lot of more work to be done.... huge task which I do not see happening. I doubt it.

So my guess is that they will stick with what they have and try to map DX12 to Vulkan. But there always vave been people out there doing crazy things, so nobody would know.
STiAT Feb 18, 2016
Quoting: wolfyrionI want to believe that is still too early to judge Vulkan API.

Vulkan API has to be superior or at least on par with DirectX otherwise cant see the point of a new API :(
10 FPS More than OpenGL is disappointing. Oh well lets hope things will be better...

It is too early. Optimization in drivers and engines is badly needed. Time will tell, the next 6 month up to a year.
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