The Khronos Group announced today the immediate availability of the Vulkan 1.0 royalty-free, open standard API specification. As the press release reads, Vulkan provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.
This ground-up design, complementing the OpenGL and OpenGL ES 3D APIs, aims to provide applications direct control over GPU acceleration for maximized performance and predictability with minimized CPU overhead and efficient multi-threaded performance.
Multiple Vulkan 1.0 hardware drivers and SDKs are available immediately for developers to begin creating Vulkan applications and engines.
Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director, Valve, said:
“We are extremely pleased at the industry’s rapid execution on the Vulkan API initiative. Due to Vulkan’s cross platform availability, high performance and healthy open source ecosystem, we expect to see rapid uptake by software developers, far exceeding the adoption of similar APIs which are limited to specific operating systems.”
Vulkan is described as the result of 18 months in an intense collaboration between leading hardware, game engine and platform vendors, built on significant contributions from multiple Khronos members. Vulkan is designed for portability across multiple platforms with desktop and mobile GPU architectures.
Vulkan is available on multiple versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and has been adopted as a native rendering and compute API by platforms including Linux, SteamOS, Tizen and Android.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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*crossing fingers intensifies*
Now MS you can go to hell with your DX12 WIN10 Only BS.
and the trash performance, which is barely an improvement over a basic DX11 title.
The only benchmark available for DX12 is ashes of the singularity. One single game is not a good representation of DX12 performance as a whole especially one favored for AMD hardware
What do you mean favours AMD hardware, it’s Nvidia’s fault.
They have poor asynchronous support, an architectural fault.
That’s clearly wrong because the fable legend benchmarks favours Nvidia and it is using asynchronous
Isn’t that game powered by UE4?
You know, the one with GameWorks as its core.
Don’t use a biased benchmark.
No engine has GameWorks “at its core”
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178831-balkanized-gaming-nvidia-gameworks-now-a-core-part-of-ue4-amd-counters-with-mantle-integration-in-cryengine
Don’t use a biased benchmark.
I think it’s safe to say NVidia cards are bad for DX12.
Unless you want to say Microsoft favours AMD over NVidia.
Awww, why no response?
Just your average nvidiot I guess
You know thats what they are afraid of, thats why they realease their xbox games for the pc, and to hope making some money. The thing is that they are scared sh*tless. And they should be!
I salute Ms for letting the games come to pc, but make no misstake, they are not doing it by goodwill. Those F*CKRS have allways lied ablout how much they care about the pc bla bla.
We know Ms are only doing this xbox-pc as they want to keep their DirectX alive.
They are scared as hell, and thats a good thing!
But in the end im glad, so lets hope those a-holes are keep getting scared. The better for us pc gamers 😉
I really hope this takes off, but I have a feeling DX12 being able to be used across Windows and Xbox One will lead more “AAA” devs towards that. I’ll be opting for Vulkan 100% of the time personally though.
Right, obviously, but who still cares about console ports after a decade of mediocre Xbox 360 games? Console games are dumber, slower and shorter than ever before. There has never been less incentive to care. Godspeed PC/Linux exclusives.
I hope the fact that by using vulkan, developers can roll out their games on win 7-10, linux etc, while if they use dx12 it is only compatible with win10 & xbone. Also it will be faster on win 7 & 8 vs also writing a dx11 api for their game to support those versions of windows(which is extra work). I hope this will cause that they use vulkan.
Hurray choice!
pimp pimp hurray
Sneaker Pimps? Digital Pimps? The Fun Pimps? A Pimp Named Slickback?
This should make gaming on Linux more viable. I think it’s not going to take off on Windows, I don’t see how devs get an advantage in Windows with this API since MS made DirectX very sweet for developers and continue to do so.
because it sucks right now!
CS:GO
Linux -> 170 FPS
Windows – > 350+ FPS
“Vulkan -> 400+ ???? “
Well Left for Dead 2 ran better in Linux, it depends how well it’s been optimised. Also the Unigine Benchmark ran about the same in Linux and Windows too
yea just saw that GTX 980 performance lol!
it will be a good ideea to take all Steam OS games and remade them in Vulkan API
i wonder how Metro Last Light will perform how many performance boost it can get 150%-200%?
No API ever will have that much performance gain.
any performance gain its welcomed!
Withcer 3 on Steam OS via Vulkan API confirmed!
This is very good news for all gamers. No matter the platform.
Will this finally allow usage of VXGI and other forms of dynamic GI in games ?
So far DX12 garbage did not showed anything of the super duper hyped performance boost. I still remember those benchmarks of GTX680 milions of drawcalls improvement. Which right now does not mean sht in terms of FPS. Same applies for latest cards too.
Give us real FPS boost and together with Valve, Vulkan will destroy the fake garbage DX12.
Dolphin emulator got 50% performance increase with DX12.
#DX12FTW
And? OpenGL is faster than DX 11 in Dolphin, so what is your point. Vulkan will be just as fast or faster than DX 12 in it when they add support.
OpenGL has almost always been the faster backend in Dolphin API.
LOL at these pathetic MS astroturfers/shareholders. Promoting DX 12 on emulators which always had OpenGL back ends. Too funny. Bet you this moron never even used Dolphin Emulator and it is just a talking point today for MS slappies to talk about. See laughable “games journalists” PC Gamer running with this news today and this same astroturfer posting in that article.
MS? You are a joke. Please go back to the business sector with some dignity in tact.
F*CKN great news, this is good!!
Really don’t see Vulkan taking off. We’ve only had one confirmed game which will be using it and DX12 has had a great head start. BTW AMD users might want to hold off on installing the Vulken driver if you also play directx games, it doesn’t have directx. This isn’t the case for Nvidia.
An open source multi-platform low-level API that will work on every device with no restrictions from an owner. This is exactly what we need in the gaming industry right now.
I agree. But we had OpenGL many years too but it didn’t mean that DirectX finished. And I read this assumptions years ago. How OpenGL win. Look, I am not saying that this is the same situation, but we should wait how it will work. We will see in few years.
OpenGL was always fighting a losing battle because it had no “real” support. id Software & Valve were the only Studios using it, & id only made 1 game with it in the last decade+, while nobody cares what Valve is doing unless they’ve found a new Billion-Dollar IP, at which point they try to rip it off.
This time though, we have the Linux-powered SteamOS & Steam Hardware initiative. If it takes off, Microsoft & Sony will both start to feel the Vulkan heat.
Can’t help but support something like this! 🙂 Open Source has always been great for competition.
I hope their optimizations are well coded.
I wish them the best but OpenGL didn’t really take off. I’m afraid Vulkan will burn out quickly, too.
still an alternative to dx12?
Yes, it is.
I can see Valve pushing Vulkan really hard.
They have their Linux OS SteamOS.
Didn’t Valve say they were integrating it into their Source engine.
Given that Steam is controlling a huge part of PC gaming, yeah, it really seems possible. Fingers crossed for Valve and Vulkan.
What will MS’s answer be? Requiring secureboot from OEM’s to make Linux installation very hard and punishing any OEM that doesn’t, which is what they do to an OEM that offers Linux installs (how this is legal is beyond me) with higher fees for Windows. What will secureboot do? KILL MODDING COMPLETELY. They are conditioning you with their stupid store and no modding. Grow a pair and tell MS to go to h%#%. The Xbox division loses billions, the only reason they are in gaming is to sell you OS’s you do not need, and then they use that money to keep or delay games from you…
This is your ONE CHANCE to be free from MS PC Gamers. Educate yourself on Microsoft Astroturfing and tell them all to go F themselves. When they are blatant? Flood the FTC with complaints. MS’s BS stops here. MS future with PC Gaming is no modding, MS approved hardware, and a nightmare. This is what Gabe warned you about.
nice speech dude. now lets all hope that all those big names in the vulkan supporters list are there for something more than just be listed as backers and make actual use of it in games.
When I was about to put the AMD link I had already hit “post” >.<
A dream come true.
I’d much rather see vulkan succeed even if it’s slower then dx12 and i don’t even like linux. The less controller Microsoft has over pc gamers the better.
REJOICE…this is a historic day!
Let’s hope its widely adoped and great engines and games come out in the coming years. Hope that Micros#!t gets buried underground!!!
Hey devs, Please use this open source/multiplatform api.
Finally, I was just thinking a few days ago about when Vulkan was going to be released.
I hope the developers of emulators like Dolphin, PCSX2, and other 3D consoles are planning on using this.
can you use this right now over dx12/.
What about Fermi GPUs , that’s a huge bummer D:
Im hype!!