The Khronos Group announced today the release of the Vulkan 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality. This new version will also improve application performance, and will enhance API usability.
Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications. These features include: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.
Tom Olson, distinguished engineer at Arm, and Vulkan working group chair, said:
“Vulkan 1.2 brings together nearly two dozen high-priority features developed over the past two years into one, unified core Vulkan standard, setting a cutting-edge bar for functionality in the industry’s only open GPU API for cross-platform 3D and compute acceleration. Khronos will continue delivering regular Vulkan ecosystem updates with this proven, developer-focused methodology. We aim to both meet the needs and expand the horizons of real-world applications.”
Khronos and the Vulkan community will also support Vulkan 1.2 in a wide range of open source compilers, tools, and debuggers by the end of January 2020. This includes the RenderDoc frame capture and debugging tool, the Vulkan conformance test suite, and the Vulkan SDK with support for both the ‘GPU Assisted’ and ‘Best Practices’ validation layers.
Lastly, all GPUs that support previous versions of Vulkan are capable of supporting Vulkan 1.2, ensuring its widespread availability. As of today, five GPU vendors have Vulkan 1.2 implementations passing the Khronos conformance tests. These are: AMD, Arm, Imagination Technologies, Intel, NVIDIA, plus the open-source Mesa RADV driver for AMD.
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.”
Contact: Email
Awesome Vulkan! Powering the Doomslayer!
Only new games?
More like newer engine revisions. You can just use this updated version of Vulkan but to actually take advantage of the changes, additions and updates you need to code for it…at an engine level.
Also considering the timing of this and the new consoles I would expect to see this implemented in UE5, idtech 8, updated versions of in-house engines that use vulkan etc.
We will probably see games that start using these Vulkan updates in Holiday 2020, summer 2020 at the earliest and that’s only if the developer had access to an early version of this Vulkan update and rushed to implement it which is unlikely.
Doom Eternal is on IDTech 7 compared to previous games.
Tech like that is out sooner for companies and Dev teams 😉
It won’t be part of idtech 7. Certain developers might get an early glimpse but they wouldn’t be able to implement it into a game coming so soon let alone the engine.
Hopefully this fixes whatever issues were happening with Raytracing.
Under Vulkan? What exactly?
What’s the point of it I’ve never used it?
Khronos really need to roll out some cross-vendor ray tracing API to rival Microsoft’s DXR. Hopefully by the time RDNA 2 ships.
It’s also sad that variable rate shading is still not officially supported, instead relying on Nvidia extensions (true for ray tracing as well).
They really are behind Microsoft.
Some news on GDC event, John…
Khronos will discuss “standardised ray tracing” at GDC – AMD and Nvidia will be there…
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/ray-tracing-in-vulkan-presented-by-khronos-group/873839
To date, only one retail game has delivered raytracing support through the Vulkan API, Wolfenstein Youngblood. If you want to include more games in this list, you’ll need to include Vulkan-based projects like Quake II RTX and other non-retail releases.
As it stands, the Vulkan API lacks support for raytracing. Yes, Nvidia has released RTX specific extensions for Vulkan raytracing, but this support is hardware exclusive and lacks the multi-platform/multi-vendor raytracing support that Microsoft’s DXR (DirectX Raytracing) delivers.
At GDC 2020, the Khronos Group plans to discuss “Ray Tracing in Vulkan” with engineers from both AMD and Nvidia. That’s right AMD and Nvidia, standardised ray tracing support will require support for multiple hardware vendors, and AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group has plans to enter the ray tracing arena soon.
Sadly, we do not know what form Khronos’ ray tracing implementation will take. Still, given Khronos’ recent moves with Vulkan 1.2, we guess that Vulkan will closely align with Microsoft and its DXR implementation. Vulkan 1.2 already supports HLSL (DirectX’s Shading Language) with support for up to Shader Model 6.2. Support for Shader Model 6.3 will bring with it support for DXR HLSL code, and this code should be usable with Vulkan’s planned raytracing implementation.
Why align so closely with Microsoft? The simple answer is that multi-platform game releases will likely come to Microsoft’s next-generation console, the Xbox Series X, and with that comes the need to utilise DirectX 12. Aligning with Microsoft with regards to raytracing will make it easier for developers to utilise their existing code with Vulkan, or create new code which will function in both DirectX 12 and Vulkan.
At this time, it is unknown when official ray tracing support will come to Vulkan, though we should expect to bear more at GDC.
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/ray-tracing-in-vulkan-presented-by-khronos-group/873839
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/khronos_will_discuss_standardized_ray_tracing_at_gdc_-_amd_and_nvidia_will_be_there/1