Vulkan

Original author(s)| AMD, DICE (original Mantle design)
Developer(s)| (donated and derived variant, as Vulkan)
Initial release| Error: first parameter is missing. ()
Stable release| 1.3.277 (February 1, 2024; 2 years ago (2024-02-01)[1]) [±]
Written in| (also available C++ API[2])
Operating system| Android, Linux, BSD Unix,[3] Windows, Nintendo Switch,[4][5][6] Fuchsia, Raspberry Pi,[7] vxWorks,[8] QNX,[9] HarmonyOS, OpenHarmony, Oniro, Haiku, Stadia, Tizen,[10][11]
Through portability workarounds: macOS,[12] iOS[13]
Type| 3D graphics and compute API[14]

Vulkan is a cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing.[15][16] It to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, and it is also designed to work with modern multi-core CPUs.

Microsoft supports Vulkan 1.2 (and more) on Windows 10 and 11, with a downloadable compatibility pack.[17]

## Contents

* 1 Overview
* 2 Features
* 2.1 Cross-platform
* 2.2 Lower CPU usage
* 2.3 Multi-threading friendly design
* 2.4 Pre-compiled shaders
* 2.5 Others
* 2.6 OpenGL vs. Vulkan
* 3 Versions
* 3.1 Vulkan 1.0
* 3.2 Vulkan 1.1
* 3.3 Vulkan 1.3
* 3.4 Vulkan 1.4
* 3.5 Planned features
* 4 History
* 4.1 2015
* 4.2 2016
* 4.3 2018
* 4.4 2019
* 4.5 2020
* 4.6 2022
* 4.7 2024
* 5 Support across vendors
* 5.1 Intel
* 5.2 AMD
* 5.3 NVIDIA
* 5.4 Android and mobile GPUs
* 5.5 Apple
* 5.6 Huawei, OpenAtom Foundation and Eclipse Foundation
* 6 Backwards compatibility
* 7 See also
* 8 Notes
* 9 References
* 10 Further reading
* 11 External links

## Overview

Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D-graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media, and highly parallelized computing. Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more efficient CPU and GPU usage compared to the older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs. It does so by providing a considerably lower-level API for the application than the older APIs, that more closely resembles how modern GPUs work.

Vulkan is comparable to Apple's Metal API and Microsoft's Direct3D 12. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores.[18]

Vulkan was first announced by the non-profit Khronos Group at GDC 2015.[14][19][20] The Vulkan API was initially referred to as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", or "OpenGL next"Cite error: Closing `</ref>` missing for `<ref>` tag

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.[14]

## Features

OpenGL and Vulkan are both rendering APIs. In both cases, the GPU executes shaders, while the CPU executes everything else.

Vulkan is intended to provide a variety of advantages over other APIs as well as over its predecessor, OpenGL. Vulkan offers lower overhead, more direct control over the GPU, and lower CPU usage.[20] Its overall concept and feature set are similar to those of Mantle. They were later adopted by Microsoft with Direct3D 12 and by Apple with Metal.

Intended advantages of Vulkan over previous-generation APIs include the following:

### Cross-platform

Vulkan is available on multiple modern operating systems and architectures, and provides a single API for both desktop and mobile graphics devices, whereas previously these were split between OpenGL and OpenGL ES respectively. Like OpenGL, and in contrast to Direct3D 12, the Vulkan API is not locked to a single OS or device form factor. Vulkan runs natively on Android, Linux, BSD Unix, QNX, Haiku,[21] Nintendo Switch, Raspberry Pi, Stadia, Fuchsia, Tizen, and Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11. MoltenVK provides freely licensed[22][23] third-party support for macOS, iOS and tvOS by wrapping over Apple's Metal API.[24]

### Lower CPU usage

Vulkan reduces load on CPUs through the use of batching and other low-level optimizations, therefore reducing CPU workloads and leaving the CPU free to do more computation or rendering than would otherwise be possible.[25][26]

### Multi-threading friendly design

Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 were initially designed for use with single-core CPUs and only received augmentation to be executed on multi-cores. Even when application developers use the augmentations, these APIs regularly do not scale well on multi-cores. Vulkan offers improved scalability on multi-core CPUs due to the modernized threading architecture.[27][28]

### Pre-compiled shaders

OpenGL uses the high-level language GLSL for writing shaders, which forces each OpenGL driver to implement its own compiler for GLSL. This then executes at application runtime to translate the program's shaders into the GPU's machine code. In contrast, Vulkan drivers are supposed to ingest shaders already translated into an intermediate binary format called SPIR-V (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation), analogous to the binary format that HLSL shaders are compiled into in Direct3D. By allowing shader pre-compilation, application initialization speed is improved and a larger variety of shaders can be used per scene. A Vulkan driver only needs to perform GPU specific optimization and code generation, resulting in easier driver maintenance, and potentially smaller driver packages.[29] The developers of applications now can also more easily obfuscate proprietary shader code, due to shaders not being stored directly as source code, however tools are provided that can decompile SPIR-V to human-readable high-level code.[28][30]

### Others

* Vulkan provides unified management of compute kernels and graphical shaders, eliminating the need to use a separate compute API in conjunction with a graphics API.
* Ray tracing is provided in a set of cross-vendor extensions, which together are analogous to the OptiX and DirectX Raytracing APIs.[31] No such functionality is exposed in OpenGL.
* Video acceleration for decoding and encoding, such as H.264 and H.265.

### OpenGL vs. Vulkan

OpenGL | Vulkan[32]

|

One single global state machine | Object-based with no global state
State is tied to a single context | All state concepts are localized to a command buffer
Operations can only be executed sequentially | Multi-threaded programming is possible
GPU memory and synchronization are usually hidden | Explicit control over memory management and synchronization
Extensive error checking | Vulkan drivers do no error checking at runtime;
there is a validation layer for developers

In 2016, NVIDIA stated that "OpenGL is still a great option for a lot of use cases, as it comes at a much lower complexity and maintenance burden than Vulkan, while in many cases still providing great overall performance."[33]

AMD states that "Vulkan supports close-to-metal control, enabling faster performance and better image quality across Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Linux. No other graphics API offers the same powerful combination of OS compatibility, rendering features, and hardware efficiency."[34]

## Versions

### Vulkan 1.0

Vulkan 1.0 was released in February 2016.

### Vulkan 1.1

At SIGGRAPH 2016, Khronos announced that Vulkan would be getting support for automatic multi-GPU features, similar to what is offered by Direct3D 12.[35] Multi-GPU support included in-API removes the need for SLI or Crossfire which requires graphics cards to be of the same model. API multi-GPU instead allows the API to intelligently split the workload among two or more completely different GPUs.Cite error: Closing `</ref>` missing for `<ref>` tag This first major update to the API standardized several extensions, such as multi-view, device groups, cross-process and cross-API sharing, advanced compute functionality, HLSL support, and YCbCr support.[36] At the same time, it also brought better compatibility with DirectX 12, explicit multi-GPU support, (optional extensions[37] for supporting hardware, e.g. some Nvidia GPUs, on e.g. Windows and Android) ray tracing support,[38][39] and laid the groundwork for the next generation of GPUs.Cite error: Closing `</ref>` missing for `<ref>` tag was released by the Khronos Group.Cite error: Closing `</ref>` missing for `<ref>` tag

### Vulkan 1.3

On January 25, 2022, Vulkan 1.3 was released by the Khronos Group.[40] This third major update to the API integrates 23 additional commonly used proven Vulkan extensions into the base Vulkan standard.[41] Vulkan 1.3 focuses on reducing fragmentation by making the new features not optional in order for a device to be considered Vulkan 1.3 capable.[40][42] The new features in Vulkan 1.3 include dynamic rendering, additional dynamic state, improved synchronization API, and device profiles.

### Vulkan 1.4

On December 3, 2024, Vulkan 1.4 was released by the Khronos Group.[43]

### Planned features

When releasing OpenCL 2.2, the Khronos Group announced that OpenCL would converge where possible with Vulkan to enable OpenCL software deployment flexibility over both APIs.[44][45] This has been now demonstrated by Adobe's Premiere Rush using the clspv[46] open source compiler to compile significant amounts of OpenCL C kernel code to run on a Vulkan runtime for deployment on Android.[47]

## History

This section is in list format, but may read better as prose. You can help by converting this section, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (May 2021)

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The Khronos Group began a project to create a next generation graphics API in July 2014 with a kickoff meeting at Valve.[48] At SIGGRAPH 2014, the project was publicly announced with a call for participants.[14]

According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, the trademark for Vulkan was filed on February 19, 2015.[49]

Vulkan was formally named and announced at Game Developers Conference 2015, although speculation and rumors centered around a new API existed beforehand and referred to it as "glNext".[50]

### 2015

In early 2015, LunarG (funded by Valve) developed and showcased a Linux driver for Intel which enabled Vulkan compatibility on the HD 4000 series integrated graphics, despite the open-source Mesa drivers not being fully compatible with OpenGL 4.0 until later that year.[51][52] There is still the possibility[53] of Sandy Bridge support, since it supports compute through Direct3D11.

On August 10, 2015, Google announced that future versions of Android would support Vulkan.[54] Android 7.x "Nougat" launched support for Vulkan on August 22, 2016. Android 8.0 "Oreo" has full support.

On December 18, 2015, the Khronos Group announced that the 1.0 version of the Vulkan specification was nearly complete and would be released when conforming drivers were available.[20]

### 2016

The full Vulkan specification and the open-source Vulkan SDK were released on February 16, 2016.[55]

### 2018

On February 26, 2018, Khronos Group announced that the Vulkan API became available to all on macOS and iOS through the MoltenVK library, which enables Vulkan to run on top of Metal.[56] Other new developments were shown at SIGGRAPH 2018.[57] Previously MoltenVK was a proprietary and commercially licensed solution, but Valve made an arrangement with developer Brenwill Workshop Ltd to open-source MoltenVK under the Apache 2.0 license and as a result the library is now available on GitHub. Valve also announced that Dota 2 can as of February 26, 2018 run on macOS using the Vulkan API, which is based on MoltenVK.[58]

### 2019

On February 25, 2019, the Vulkan Safety Critical (SC) Working Group was announced to bring Vulkan GPU acceleration to safety critical industries.[59]

Google's Stadia streaming cloud gaming service used Vulkan on Linux based servers with AMD GPUs.[60]

### 2020

On January 15, 2020, Vulkan 1.2 was released.

Alongside the Vulkan 1.2 release, the Khronos Group posted a blog post which considered that HLSL support in Vulkan had reached "production ready" status, given the improvements in Microsoft's DXC compiler and Khronos's glslang compiler, and new features in Vulkan 1.2 which enhance HLSL support.[61]

On February 3, 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that it was working on an open source Vulkan driver for their Raspberry Pi, a popular single board computer.[62] On June 20, 2020, a graphics engineer revealed that he had created one after two years of work that was capable of running VkQuake3 at over 100FPS on the small computer.[63]

On March 17, 2020, Khronos Group released the Ray Tracing extensions, based on Nvidia's proprietary extension, with some major extensions and many minor changes, which in turn was based on Nvidia's OptiX API.[64][65] On November 23, 2020, these Ray Tracing extensions were finalized.Cite error: Closing `</ref>` missing for `<ref>` tag

### 2022

On January 25, 2022, Vulkan 1.3 was released.

On March 1, 2022, Vulkan SC 1.0 was released, bringing Vulkan graphics and compute for the safety-critical industry while being based on the Vulkan 1.2 standard.[66]

On August 1, 2022, Raspberry Pi Foundation announced that their driver for the Raspberry Pi 4 is Vulkan 1.2 conformant.[67]

On September 1, 2022, Mesh Shading for Vulkan was released.[68][69]

### 2024

A new Vulkan Roadmap was announced on January 25, 2024.[70] A new extension for decoding AV1 video was released on February 1, 2024.[71]

## Support across vendors

Screenshot of `vulkaninfo`, showing information about supported Vulkan instances and `vkcube`, a program to test Vulkan implementation on a system

Initial specifications stated that Vulkan drivers can be implemented on any hardware that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x and up.[72] As Vulkan support requires new graphics drivers, this does not necessarily imply that every existing device that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4.x will have Vulkan drivers available.

### Intel

As of March 2023, Intel has split Vulkan driver support on Windows[73] and on Linux.[74] All drivers are developed by Intel.

On Windows, Skylake to Ice Lake supports up to Vulkan 1.3,[75] with limited support after July 2022 as future updates will only cover security fixes.[73] Iris Xe and newer are fully supported as of March 2023.[76]

On Linux, as of March 2023 there is incomplete Vulkan support for Haswell[77] with it not being Vulkan 1.0 compliant.[78] Apart from Haswell, Ivy Bridge and Broadwell are also supported by a legacy Vulkan driver in Mesa called HASVK.[74] Skylake and newer being supported by a driver in Mesa called ANV.[74]

### AMD

On Windows, Vulkan 1.2 is supported from GCN 1.0 to GCN 3.0,[79][80][81] with no further updates planned after June 2021.[82] GCN 4.0 and newer support Vulkan 1.3.[83]

On Linux there are various different Vulkan drivers with varying and overlapping hardware support. There is the open-source Vulkan driver called AMDVLK, developed by AMD which mirrors Windows support.[84] There is also the proprietary driver called AMDGPU-PRO which is not recommended to be used for most users as of March 2023.[85]

There is also the recommended driver called RADV in Mesa developed by Valve, Red Hat,[86] Google[87] and others. This driver as of March 2023 supports all GCN and RDNA cards.[88] This RADV driver's support for GCN 1.0 through GCN 2.0 requires its experimental support in the amdgpu kernel module to be enabled.[89]

### NVIDIA

On Windows and Linux there is the NVIDIA developed Vulkan driver which supports Vulkan 1.2 on Kepler cards[90] with no further updates planned after September 2021.[91] Maxwell and newer cards support Vulkan 1.4.[92]

NVK, an experimental, open source Vulkan driver for Linux based on nouveau, was announced in October 2022.[93] It was merged into mainline Mesa in August 2023.[94] The driver is currently Vulkan 1.4 conformant on Turing and newer cards,[95], Vulkan 1.3 conformant on Maxwell, Pascal and Volta cards[96] and Vulkan 1.2 conformant on Kepler cards.[97]

### Android and mobile GPUs

Most modern Android devices support Vulkan. Android 7.0 Nougat includes optional Vulkan 1.0 support,[98] Android 9.0 Pie includes optional Vulkan 1.1 support, and Android 10 expects (but does not require) that all non-low memory 64-bit devices support Vulkan 1.1.[99]Cite error: Invalid parameter in `<ref>` tag On Linux and some ChromeOS devices, the open-source Mesa driver provides support for Arm Mali (Midgard and Bifrost), Qualcomm Adreno, and Broadcom VideoCore VI hardware.[100]

### Apple

As of June 2022, Apple devices do not provide native support for the Vulkan API.[101] Vulkan support is available via the open-source library MoltenVK, which provides a Vulkan implementation on top of the Metal graphics API provided on iOS and macOS devices, though it has some limitations in regards to certain advanced API features.[24]

In June 2022, version 1.3.217 of Vulkan added support for Metal objects, facilitating import and export between the two APIs.[102] In December 2022, Vulkan version 1.3.236 added small fixes for the interaction with Apple Metal.[103]

### Huawei, OpenAtom Foundation and Eclipse Foundation

As of August 2023, Huawei provides supports for native Vulkan NAPI with the industry standard SPIR-V shader since HarmonyOS 4.0 API 10 and extended into HarmonyOS NEXT system. It has been adopted as an extension on OpenAtom's consortium open source project, OpenHarmony with a newer graphics stack for the system, including Eclipse Foundation based Oniro project, ArkGraphics 3D software engine that has been recently open sourced since May 2024 on OpenHarmony 5.0 beta 1 that has been previously exclusive to proprietary HarmonyOS NEXT developer kit, on custom graphics pipelines features.[104]

## Backwards compatibility

Vulkan is not backwards compatible with OpenGL,[105][30][note 1] although there are certain projects that implement OpenGL on top of Vulkan, such as Google's ANGLE and Mesa's Zink.[106]

Vulkan is also not compatible with other graphics APIs such as Direct3D, Metal, and Mantle, however implementations of those APIs exist atop of Vulkan:

* Direct3D has a number of implementations, namely DXVK for Direct3D 8, 9, 10, and 11, and VKD3D-Proton for Direct3D 12 support. Other, older versions, of Direct3D may be enabled with other related software such as Wine.
* Metal has an in-development third-party implementation named Indium, intended to be used with the Darling compatibility layer.
* Mantle has an in-development third-party implementation named GRVK, to support older Mantle games.

Platform-specific graphics APIs implemented atop of Vulkan may also be able to run on alternative platforms. For example, DXVK provides an alternative shared library intended to be used on Linux natively (without the Wine compatibility layer) to help with game porting.

## See also

* List of 3D graphics libraries

## Notes

1. ↑ The process of setting up a graphics rendering pipeline doesn't differ drastically from OpenGL [ES] ones. E.g. shaders written in GLSL still can be reused: the source code can be compiled/translated by a standalone compiler into a new intermediate binary format called SPIR-V, which can then be consumed by the Vulkan API.

## References

1. ↑ "Vulkan® 1.3.277 - A Specification". https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.3/html/vkspec.html.
2. ↑ KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Hpp, The Khronos Group, 2025-03-02, https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Hpp, retrieved 2025-03-03
3. ↑ "Vulkan on FreeBSD". October 28, 2021. https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/displayreport.php?id=12842/.
4. ↑ "Nintendo Switch Listed as Vulkan and OpenGL Conformant – My Nintendo News". Excite Global Media. December 19, 2016. https://mynintendonews.com/2016/12/19/nintendo-switch-listed-as-vulkan-and-opengl-conformant/.
5. ↑ Palumbo, Alessio (December 19, 2016). "Nintendo Switch Officially Supports Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5 & OpenGL ES". https://wccftech.com/nintendo-switch-supports-vulkan/.
6. ↑ "Conformant Products". The Khronos Group. April 28, 2018. https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#submission_129.
7. ↑ "Vulkan on Raspberry Pi". July 14, 2021. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/vulkan-update-were-conformant/.
8. ↑ "VxWorks offers support for many standard graphic libraries, such as ..., and Vulkan". https://www.windriver.com/themes/Windriver/pdf/vxworks-product-overview.pdf.
9. ↑ "Vulkan on QNX". July 14, 2021. https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.2-extensions/man/html/VK_QNX_screen_surface.html.
10. ↑ Bright, Peter; Walton, Mark (February 16, 2016). "Vulkan now official, with 1.0 API release and AMD driver [Updated"]. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/vulkan-gets-official-with-1-0-release-and-amd-driver/.
11. ↑ Valich, Theo (February 17, 2016). "Mantle Cycle is Complete as Khronos Releases Vulkan 1.0". http://vrworld.com/2016/02/17/mantle-complete-khronos-releases-vulkan/.
12. ↑ "New Release of Vulkan SDK" (in en). 2021-01-13. https://www.khronos.org/blog/new-release-of-vulkan-sdk.
13. ↑ "Developing with Vulkan on Apple iOS" (in en). 2024-04-03. https://www.khronos.org/blog/developing-with-vulkan-on-apple-ios.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 "More on Vulkan and SPIR – V: The future of high-performance graphics". Khronos Group. p. 10. https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2015-gdc/Khronos-Vulkan-GDC_Mar15.pdf. "Thanks AMD!"
15. ↑ "Vulkan" (in en). December 2, 2015. https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan.
16. ↑ "Vulkan®" (in en-GB). https://gpuopen.com/vulkan/. {{cbignore} name=":1">"Developing 3D Graphics with Vulkan on Mobile" (in en). https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/developing-3d-graphics-vulkan-mobile.
17. ↑ "OpenCL™, OpenGL®, and Vulkan® Compatibility Pack". https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nqpsl29bfff?hl=en-EN&gl=EN.
18. ↑ Hruska, Joel (March 10, 2015). "Next-generation Vulkan API could be Valve's killer advantage in battling Microsoft". ExtremeTech. http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/200836-next-generation-vulkan-api-could-be-valves-killer-advantage-in-battling-microsoft.
19. ↑ "Vulkan: Graphics and compute Belong Together". Khronos Group. March 2015. https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/2015_vulkan_v1_Overview.pdf.
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 "Vulkan – Graphics and compute belong together". Khronos Group. https://www.khronos.org/vulkan.
21. ↑ "Vulkan lavapipe software rendering is working on Haiku" (in en). September 24, 2021. https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/vulkan-lavapipe-software-rendering-is-working-on-haiku/11363.
22. ↑ "MoltenVK, popular Vulkan development tool for macOS, goes open-source" (in en). Neowin. https://www.neowin.net/news/moltenvk-popular-vulkan-development-tool-for-macos-goes-open-source.
23. ↑ "Vulkan graphics will enable faster games and apps on Apple platforms" (in en-US). VentureBeat. February 26, 2018. https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/26/vulkan-will-enable-faster-games-and-apps-on-apple-platforms/. {{cbignore} "Vulkan Is Now Available on macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac – Phoronix" (in en). https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vulkan-on-mac&num=1.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 "MoltenVK". Molten. https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/.
25. ↑ "Vulkan: High efficiency on mobile". Imagination Blog. Imagination Technologies. November 5, 2015. http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/vulkan-high-efficiency-on-mobile.
26. ↑ "Khronos Group Announces The Next-Generation 'Vulkan' Graphics And Compute API". Tom's Hardware. March 3, 2015. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/khronos-group-vulkan-graphics-api,28678.html.
27. ↑ "Vulkan: Scaling to multiple threads". Imagination Blog. Imagination Technologies. November 24, 2015. http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/vulkan-scaling-to-multiple-threads.
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 "Adreno Vulkan Developer Guide". August 31, 2017. pp. 9–10, 22. https://developer.qualcomm.com/qfile/34706/80-nb295-7_a-adreno_vulkan_developer_guide.pdf.
29. ↑ Kessenich, John. "An Introduction to SPIR-V". Khronos Group. https://www.khronos.org/registry/spir-v/papers/WhitePaper.pdf.
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `:1`
31. ↑ "Ray tracing in Vulkan". Khronos Group. December 15, 2020. https://www.khronos.org/blog/ray-tracing-in-vulkan.
32. ↑ "FOSDEM 2016 – Vulkan in Open-Source". FOSDEM. https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/vulkan_graphics/.
33. ↑ "Transitioning from OpenGL to Vulkan". Nvidia. February 11, 2016. https://developer.nvidia.com/transitioning-opengl-vulkan.
34. ↑ "AMD Vulkan API". AMD. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/vulkan.
35. ↑ "Vulkan Next will bring better support for VR and multiple GPUs". PC World. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3101843/software-games/vulkan-next-will-bring-better-support-for-vr-and-multiple-gpus.html.
36. ↑ Larabel, Michael (March 7, 2018). "Vulkan 1.1 Released As The First Major Update To This Graphics/Compute API". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=khr-vulkan-11&num=1.
37. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `ray tracing`
38. ↑ Larabel, Michael (September 19, 2018). "Vulkan 1.1.85 Released With Raytracing, Mesh Shaders & Other New NVIDIA Extensions". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vulkan-1.1.85-Released.
39. ↑ Larabel, Michael (November 4, 2018). "Vulkan 1.1.91 Released With NV_ray_tracing, AMD Memory Overallocation Behavior". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vulkan-1.1.91-Released.
40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 "Khronos Strengthens Vulkan Ecosystem with Release of Vulkan 1.3, Public Roadmap and Profiles". January 25, 2022. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/vulkan-reduces-fragmentation-and-provides-roadmap-visibility-for-developers.
41. ↑ "Vulkan® 1.3.206 – A Specification (with all registered Vulkan extensions)". https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.3-extensions/html/chap49.html#versions-1.3.
42. ↑ "Vulkan 1.3 Specification Released". January 25, 2022. https://gamefromscratch.com/vulkan-1-3-specification-released/.
43. ↑ "Khronos Streamlines Development and Deployment of GPU-Accelerated Applications with Vulkan 1.4". The Khronos Group (Press release). December 3, 2024.
44. ↑ "Breaking: OpenCL Merging Roadmap into Vulkan | PC Perspective". https://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/Breaking-OpenCL-Merging-Roadmap-Vulkan.
45. ↑ "SIGGRAPH 2018: OpenCL-Next Taking Shape, Vulkan Continues Evolving – Phoronix". https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=siggraph-2018-khr&num=2.
46. ↑ Clspv is a prototype compiler for a subset of OpenCL C to Vulkan compute shaders: google/clspv, August 17, 2019, https://github.com/google/clspv, retrieved 2019-08-20
47. ↑ "Vulkan Update SIGGRAPH 2019". https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2019-siggraph/Vulkan-01-Update-SIGGRAPH-Jul19.pdf.
48. ↑ SIGGRAPH 2015: 3D Graphics API State of the Union (Video). SIGGRAPH 2015. Khronos Group. September 16, 2015. Event occurs at 57:24. Retrieved November 12, 2015 - via YouTube.
49. ↑ "US Patent and Trademark Office". http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86539994&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch.
50. ↑ Batchelor, James (March 3, 2015). "glNext revealed as Vulkan graphics API | Latest news from the game development industry | Develop". Develop. http://www.develop-online.net/news/glnext-revealed-as-vulkan-graphics-api/0203867.
51. ↑ Larabel, Michael (March 5, 2015). "Valve Developed An Intel Linux Vulkan GPU Driver". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=valve-intel-vulkan-driver.
52. ↑ Larabel, Michael (March 12, 2015). "Learning More About The Intel Vulkan Driver, Linux Vulkan Plans". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LunarG-Vulkan-AMA.
53. ↑ "Evan Odabashian on Twitter". https://twitter.com/eodabash/status/573178560283717632.
54. ↑ Woods, Shannon (August 12, 2015). "Low-overhead rendering with Vulkan". Android Developers Blog. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2015/08/low-overhead-rendering-with-vulkan.html.
55. ↑ "Khronos Releases Vulkan 1.0 Specification". Khronos Group Press Release. February 16, 2016. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases-vulkan-1-0-specification.
56. ↑ Bright, Peter (February 26, 2018). "Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple". Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/vulkan-is-coming-to-macos-ios-but-no-thanks-to-apple/.
57. ↑ "3D Graphics with Vulkan and OpenGL". The Khronos Group. 2018-08-15. https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/2018-siggraph/Vulkan-and-OpenGL-BOF-SIGGRAPH_Aug18.pdf.
58. ↑ Larabel, Michael (February 26, 2018). "Vulkan Is Now Available on macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac". Phoronix. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vulkan-on-mac&num=1.
59. ↑ "Khronos Group Begins Work on a New Standards Initiative to Bring Vulkan GPU Acceleration to Safety Critical Industries" (in en). February 25, 2019. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-group-begins-work-on-a-new-standards-initiative-to-bring-vulkan-gpu-acceleration-to-safety-critical-industries.
60. ↑ Larabel, Michael (2019-03-19). "Stadia Is Google's Cloud Gaming Service Using Linux, Vulkan & A Custom AMD GPU". https://www.phoronix.com/news/Google-Stadia-Vulkan-Linux.
61. ↑ "HLSL as a First Class Vulkan Shading Language" (in en). January 15, 2020. https://www.khronos.org/blog/hlsl-first-class-vulkan-shading-language.
62. ↑ Mott, Nathaniel (February 3, 2020). "Raspberry Pi to Get Vulkan Graphics Driver (Eventually)". https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-vulkan-graphics-driver-release.
63. ↑ Zhiye Liu (June 20, 2020). "Nvidia Engineer's Vulkan Driver For Raspberry Pi Runs Quake III Over 100 FPS at 720p". https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-engineer-vulkan-driver-raspberry-pi-quake-iii-100-fps.
64. ↑ "Khronos Group Releases Vulkan Ray Tracing". March 17, 2020. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-group-releases-vulkan-ray-tracing.
65. ↑ "Vulkan Ray-Tracing Arrives With New Khronos Extension – Phoronix". https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=vulkan-ray-tracing&num=1.
66. ↑ "Vulkan SC – Vulkan graphics for the safety critical industry" (in en). February 22, 2019. https://www.khronos.org//.
67. ↑ "Vulkan update: version 1.2 conformance for Raspberry Pi 4". August 1, 2022. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/vulkan-update-version-1-2-conformance-for-raspberry-pi-4/.
68. ↑ "Mesh Shading for Vulkan". September 2022. https://www.khronos.org/blog/mesh-shading-for-vulkan.
69. ↑ "VK_EXT_mesh_shader". https://registry.khronos.org/vulkan/specs/1.3-extensions/man/html/VK_EXT_mesh_shader.html.
70. ↑ "Khronos Drives Industry Support for Expanded 3D Features with Vulkan Roadmap 2024". January 25, 2024. https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-drives-industry-support-for-expanded-3d-features-with-vulkan-roadmap-2024.
71. ↑ "Khronos Releases AV1 Decode in Vulkan Video with SDK Support for H.264/H.265 Encode". February 2024. https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-releases-vulkan-video-av1-decode-extension-vulkan-sdk-now-supports-h.264-h.265-encode.
72. ↑ "Vulkan Overview". Khronos Group. June 2015. https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/vulkan-overview.pdf. p. 19 "Vulkan Status"
73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 "Graphics Driver Support Update for 10th Generation and Older Intel Processor Graphics" (in en). 2022-07-27. https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Graphics-Driver-Support-Update-for-10th-Generation-and-Older/m-p/1403969#M108899.
74. ↑ 74.0 74.1 74.2 "Intel Vulkan Driver Split Happens - "HASVK" Introduced For Older Gen7/Gen8 Graphics" (in en). https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-ANV-HASVK-Split-Merged.
75. ↑ "Intel® 6th-10th Gen Processor Graphics - Windows" (in en). https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/762755/intel-6th-10th-gen-processor-graphics-windows.html.
76. ↑ "Intel® Arc™ & Iris® Xe Graphics - WHQL - Windows*" (in en). https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/785597/intel-arc-iris-xe-graphics-windows.html.
77. ↑ "Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete (#6008) · Issues · Mesa / mesa · GitLab" (in en). February 9, 2022. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/6008.
78. ↑ "intel: split vulkan driver between gfx7/8 and above (!18208) · Merge requests · Mesa / mesa · GitLab" (in en). August 23, 2022. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/18208.
79. ↑ "AMD Radeon R7 265 Specs" (in en). https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-r7-265.c2558.
80. ↑ "AMD Radeon HD 7790 Specs" (in en). https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-7790.c2100.
81. ↑ "AMD Radeon R9 285 Specs" (in en). https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-r9-285.c2609.
82. ↑ "Product and OS Support Update for Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1" (in en). 2021-06-21. https://community.amd.com/t5/gaming/product-and-os-support-update-for-radeon-software-adrenalin-21-6/ba-p/477423.
83. ↑ "Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 22.1.2 with Vulkan 1.3 Support Release Notes". https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-22-1-2-vulkan-1-3.
84. ↑ AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan®, GPUOpen Drivers, 2023-02-11, https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK, retrieved 2023-02-14
85. ↑ "Radeon Software For Linux 22.10 Driver Being Prepared For Release" (in en). March 31, 2022. https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/open-source-amd-linux/1316628-radeon-software-for-linux-22-10-driver-being-prepared-for-release.
86. ↑ "AMD RDNA2 Vulkan: RADV vs. RADV+NGGC vs. AMDVLK vs. PRO Driver Benchmarks" (in en). https://www.phoronix.com/review/radeon-rx6000-vulkan.
87. ↑ "Mesa's RADV Radeon Vulkan Ray-Tracing Performance Continues Improving" (in en). https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-RT-XDC-2022.
88. ↑ "RADV — The Mesa 3D Graphics Library latest documentation". https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/radv.html.
89. ↑ "AMDGPU - ArchWiki". https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU#Enable_Southern_Islands_(SI)_and_Sea_Islands_(CIK)_support.
90. ↑ "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Specs" (in en). https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gtx-770.c1856.
91. ↑ "Support Plan for Kepler-series GeForce GPUs for Desktop | NVIDIA". https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5202/~/support-plan-for-kepler-series-geforce-gpus-for-desktop.
92. ↑ "Vulkan Driver Support" (in en). 2016-02-10. https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver.
93. ↑ "Introducing NVK" (in en). https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/introducing-nvk.html.
94. ↑ "NVK Has landed!" (in en). https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/nvk-has-landed.html.
95. ↑ Ekstrand, Faith (2024-12-02). "NVK now supports Vulkan 1.4" (in en). https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/nvk-now-supports-vulkan-14.html.
96. ↑ Ekstrand, Faith (2025-04-22). "NVK enabled for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs" (in en). https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/nvk-enabled-for-maxwell,-pascal,-and-volta-gpus.html.
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98. ↑ "Android N's second preview build supports Vulkan and new emoji". Ars Technica. April 13, 2016. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/android-ns-second-preview-build-supports-vulkan-and-new-emoji/.
99. ↑ "Support for Vulkan Graphics API 1.1 is coming in Android P". April 8, 2018. https://www.xda-developers.com/vulkan-graphics-api-1-1-android-p/. {{cbignore} "What's New in Android: Q Beta 3 & More". https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/whats-new-in-android-q-beta-3-more.html.
100. ↑ "Mesamatrix: The OpenGL vs Mesa matrix". https://mesamatrix.net/.
101. ↑ "The State of Vulkan on Apple Devices". LunarG. June 2021. https://www.lunarg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/The-State-of-Vulkan-on-Apple-03June-2021.pdf.
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103. ↑ "Release Release for Vulkan SDK 1.3.236 · KhronosGroup/MoltenVK" (in en). https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/releases/tag/v1.2.1.
104. ↑ Benjamin (2024-04-10). "High fidelity graphics with ArkGraphics 3D on HarmonyOS NEXT - HarmonyOSHub" (in en-GB). https://harmonyoshub.com/high-fidelity-graphics-with-arkgraphics-3d-on-harmonyos-next/, https://harmonyoshub.com/high-fidelity-graphics-with-arkgraphics-3d-on-harmonyos-next/.
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106. ↑ "Zink – The Mesa 3D Graphics Library latest documentation". https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/zink.html.

## Further reading

* Vulkan Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Vulkan (OpenGL), Nov 10, 2016, by Graham Sellers and John Kessenich ISBN 978-0-1344-64541
* Learning Vulkan, Dec 2016, by Parminder Singh ISBN 978-1-78646-980-9
* Introduction to Computer Graphics and the Vulkan API, Jul 1, 2017, by Kenwright ISBN 978-1-5486-16175
* Vulkan Cookbook, Apr 28, 2017, by Pawel Lapinski ISBN 978-1-7864-68154
* Vulkan 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook, Feb 14th, 2025, by Sergey Kosarevsky and Alexey Medvedev and Viktor Latypov, ISBN 978-1803248110

## External links

* No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata.

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