DOCSLIB.ORG

8 Swapchains Unchained

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
8 Swapchains Unchained Swapchains Unchained! (What you need to know about Vulkan WSI) Alon Or-bach, Chair, Vulkan System Integration Sub-Group – May 2016 @alonorbach (disclaimers apply!) © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 193 Intro to Vulkan Window System Integration • Explicit control for acquisition and presentation of images WSI Jargon Buster - Designed to fit the Vulkan API and today’s • Platform compositing window systems Our terminology for an OS • Not all extensions are supported by every / window system e.g. platform Android, Windows, - You MUST check and enable the extensions Wayland, X11 via XCB your app/engine uses!!! • Presentation Engine • Today’s presentation should help you get The platform’s compositor or display engine presentation working - Learn how to present through a swapchain • Application Your app or game engine - Overview of Vulkan objects used by the WSI extensions © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 194 How many WSI extensions are there? • Two cross-platform instance extensions - VK_KHR_surface - VK_KHR_display • Six (platform) instance extensions - VK_KHR_android_surface - VK_KHR_mir_surface - VK_KHR_wayland_surface - VK_KHR_win32_surface - VK_KHR_xcb_surface - VK_KHR_xlib_surface • Two cross-platform device extensions - VK_KHR_swapchain - VK_KHR_display_swapchain © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 195 Vulkan Surfaces • VkSurfaceKHR Physical Device A Queue - Vulkan’s way to encapsulate a native Family 2 window / surface Queue Family 1 Queue Unlike an EGLSurface, creating a Family 0 Vulkan Surface doesn’t mean you’ve got your render targets created …yet Physical Device B Platform X • Platform-independent surface queries - Find out crucial information about your Queue FamilyQueue 1 Platform Y surface’s properties Family 0 - Such as format, transform, image usage - Some platforms provide additional queries • Presentation support is per queue family Physical Device C - An implementation may support multiple Queue FamilyQueue 1 platforms e.g. both xlib and xcb Family 0 - Or may not support presentation at all © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 196 Vulkan Swapchains: VK_KHR_swapchain • Array of presentable images associated with a surface const VkSwapchainCreateInfoKHR createInfo = - Application requests a minimum number { VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_SWAPCHAIN_CREATE_INFO_KHR, // sType of presentable images NULL, // pNext 0, // flags - Implementation creates at least that mySurface, // surface desiredNumberOfPresentableImages, // minImageCount number surfaceFormat, // imageFormat surfaceColorSpace, // imageColorSpace - Implementation may have a limit myExtent, // imageExtent 1, // imageArrayLayers • Upfront allocation of presentable images VK_IMAGE_USAGE_COLOR_ATTACHMENT_BIT, // imageUsage VK_SHARING_MODE_EXCLUSIVE, // imageSharingMode - No allocation hitching at crucial moment 0, // queueFamilyIndexCount NULL, // pQueueFamilyIndices - Pre-record fixed content command buffers surfaceProperties.currentTransform, // preTransform VK_COMPOSITE_ALPHA_INHERIT_BIT_KHR, // compositeAlpha swapchainPresentMode, // presentMode • Present mode determines behavior VK_TRUE, // clipped - FIFO support mandatory VK_NULL_HANDLE // oldSwapchain }; - Platforms can offer mailbox, immediate, FIFO relaxed FIFO is like eglSwapInterval = 1 Mailbox/Immediate is like eglSwapInterval 0 FIFO relaxed is like EXT_swap_control_tear © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 197 Vulkan Swapchains: They’re good! • Application knows which image within a swapchain it is presenting Similar but neater than how - Content of image preserved between EGL_KHR_partial_update / EGL_EXT_buffer_age and preserved presents behavior achieves this • Application is responsible for explicitly recreating swapchains - no surprises - Platform informs app if current swapchain - Suboptimal: e.g. after window resize, swapchain still usable for present via image scaling - Surface Lost: swapchain no longer usable for present - Application is responsible to create a new swapchain In EGL, the EGLSurface may be resized by the platform after an eglSwapBuffers call. Vulkan requires the application to intervene © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 198 Vulkan Swapchains: They’re jolly good! • Presenting and acquiring are separate operations - No need to submit a new image to acquire another one, unless presentation engine cannot release it • Application must only modify presentable images it has acquired • Presentation engine must only display presentable images that have been Stalls in frame loop presented! are very bad! In EGL, calling eglSwapBuffers both presents the current back buffer and acquires a new one Vulkan splits this up into separate operations © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 199 Steps to setup your presentable images 1 – Create a native window/surface Platform-specific APIs 2 – Create a Vulkan VK_KHR_<platform>_surface surface 3 – Query information VK_KHR_surface about your surface 4 – Create a Vulkan swapchain VK_KHR_swapchain 5 – Get your presentable images © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 200 Vulkan Frame Loop – as easy as 1-2-3! 0 – Create your swapchain 1 – Acquire the next 3 – Present the image presentable image VK_KHR_swapchain Legend 2 – Submit command Setup buffer(s) for that image Steady-state Response to suboptimal / surface_lost © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 201 Vulkan Displays: VK_KHR_display Display 0 • Vulkan’s way to discover display devices Display (screens, panels) outside a window system ModeDisplay 1 Mode 0 - Reminder: Not supported on all platforms Physical • Defines VkDisplayKHR and Device VkDisplayModeKHR objects Plane 2 - Represent the display devices and the Plane 1 modes they support connected to a Plane 0 VkPhysicalDevice - Determine if a display supports multiple planes that are blended together Surface Display 1 • Enables creation of a VkSurfaceKHR to Display ModeDisplay 1 represent a display plane Mode 0 A Vulkan display represents an actual display! (Whereas an EGLDisplay is actually just a connection to a driver – like a Vulkan Device) © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 202 VK_KHR_display_swapchain • Extends the information provided at vkQueuePresentKHR - What region to present from the swapchain image - What region to present to on the display - Whether the display should persist the image • Adds ability to create a shared swapchain - Swapchain that takes multiple VkSwapchainCreateInfoKHR structs - Allows multiple displays to be presented to simultaneously - No guarantee that presents are atomic ...presently! © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 203 Any question? [email protected] @alonorbach © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 204.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Introduction to the Vulkan Computer Graphics API
    1 Introduction to the Vulkan Computer Graphics API Mike Bailey mjb – July 24, 2020 2 Computer Graphics Introduction to the Vulkan Computer Graphics API Mike Bailey [email protected] SIGGRAPH 2020 Abridged Version This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/vulkan ABRIDGED.pptx mjb – July 24, 2020 3 Course Goals • Give a sense of how Vulkan is different from OpenGL • Show how to do basic drawing in Vulkan • Leave you with working, documented, understandable sample code http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/vulkan mjb – July 24, 2020 4 Mike Bailey • Professor of Computer Science, Oregon State University • Has been in computer graphics for over 30 years • Has had over 8,000 students in his university classes • [email protected] Welcome! I’m happy to be here. I hope you are too ! http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/vulkan mjb – July 24, 2020 5 Sections 13.Swap Chain 1. Introduction 14.Push Constants 2. Sample Code 15.Physical Devices 3. Drawing 16.Logical Devices 4. Shaders and SPIR-V 17.Dynamic State Variables 5. Data Buffers 18.Getting Information Back 6. GLFW 19.Compute Shaders 7. GLM 20.Specialization Constants 8. Instancing 21.Synchronization 9. Graphics Pipeline Data Structure 22.Pipeline Barriers 10.Descriptor Sets 23.Multisampling 11.Textures 24.Multipass 12.Queues and Command Buffers 25.Ray Tracing Section titles that have been greyed-out have not been included in the ABRIDGED noteset, i.e., the one that has been made to fit in SIGGRAPH’s reduced time slot.
    [Show full text]
  • GLSL 4.50 Spec
    The OpenGL® Shading Language Language Version: 4.50 Document Revision: 7 09-May-2017 Editor: John Kessenich, Google Version 1.1 Authors: John Kessenich, Dave Baldwin, Randi Rost Copyright (c) 2008-2017 The Khronos Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. This specification is protected by copyright laws and contains material proprietary to the Khronos Group, Inc. It or any components may not be reproduced, republished, distributed, transmitted, displayed, broadcast, or otherwise exploited in any manner without the express prior written permission of Khronos Group. You may use this specification for implementing the functionality therein, without altering or removing any trademark, copyright or other notice from the specification, but the receipt or possession of this specification does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manufacture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. Khronos Group grants express permission to any current Promoter, Contributor or Adopter member of Khronos to copy and redistribute UNMODIFIED versions of this specification in any fashion, provided that NO CHARGE is made for the specification and the latest available update of the specification for any version of the API is used whenever possible. Such distributed specification may be reformatted AS LONG AS the contents of the specification are not changed in any way. The specification may be incorporated into a product that is sold as long as such product includes significant independent work developed by the seller. A link to the current version of this specification on the Khronos Group website should be included whenever possible with specification distributions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Opengl Graphics System
    OpenGL R ES Native Platform Graphics Interface (Version 1.0) Editor: Jon Leech Copyright c 2002-2003 Promoters of the Khronos Group (3Dlabs, ARM Ltd., ATI Technologies, Inc., Discreet, Ericsson Mobile, Imagination Technologies Group plc, Motorola, Inc., Nokia, Silicon Graphics, Inc., SK Telecom, and Sun Microsystems). This document is protected by copyright, and contains information proprietary to The Khronos Group. Any copying, adaptation, distribution, public performance, or public display of this document without the express written consent of the copy- right holders is strictly prohibited. The receipt or possession of this document does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manu- facture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. R This document is a derivative work of ”OpenGL Graphics with the X Window System (Version 1.4)”. Silicon Graphics, Inc. owns, and reserves all rights in, the latter document. OpenGL is a registered trademark, and OpenGL ES is a trademark, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Contents 1 Overview 1 2 EGL Operation 2 2.1 Native Window System and Rendering APIs . 2 2.1.1 Scalar Types . 2 2.1.2 Displays . 3 2.2 Rendering Contexts and Drawing Surfaces . 3 2.2.1 Using Rendering Contexts . 4 2.2.2 Rendering Models . 4 2.2.3 Interaction With Native Rendering . 4 2.3 Direct Rendering and Address Spaces . 5 2.4 Shared State . 5 2.4.1 Texture Objects . 6 2.5 Multiple Threads . 6 2.6 Power Management . 7 3 EGL Functions and Errors 8 3.1 Errors .
    [Show full text]
  • Standards for Vision Processing and Neural Networks
    Standards for Vision Processing and Neural Networks Radhakrishna Giduthuri, AMD [email protected] © Copyright Khronos Group 2017 - Page 1 Agenda • Why we need a standard? • Khronos NNEF • Khronos OpenVX dog Network Architecture Pre-trained Network Model (weights, …) © Copyright Khronos Group 2017 - Page 2 Neural Network End-to-End Workflow Neural Network Third Vision/AI Party Applications Training Frameworks Tools Datasets Trained Vision and Neural Network Network Inferencing Runtime Network Model Architecture Desktop and Cloud Hardware Embedded/Mobile Embedded/MobileEmbedded/Mobile Embedded/Mobile/Desktop/CloudVision/InferencingVision/Inferencing Hardware Hardware cuDNN MIOpen MKL-DNN Vision/InferencingVision/Inferencing Hardware Hardware GPU DSP CPU Custom FPGA © Copyright Khronos Group 2017 - Page 3 Problem: Neural Network Fragmentation Neural Network Training and Inferencing Fragmentation NN Authoring Framework 1 Inference Engine 1 NN Authoring Framework 2 Inference Engine 2 NN Authoring Framework 3 Inference Engine 3 Every Tool Needs an Exporter to Every Accelerator Neural Network Inferencing Fragmentation toll on Applications Inference Engine 1 Hardware 1 Vision/AI Inference Engine 2 Hardware 2 Application Inference Engine 3 Hardware 3 Every Application Needs know about Every Accelerator API © Copyright Khronos Group 2017 - Page 4 Khronos APIs Connect Software to Silicon Software Silicon Khronos is an International Industry Consortium of over 100 companies creating royalty-free, open standard APIs to enable software to access
    [Show full text]
  • Khronos Template 2015
    Ecosystem Overview Neil Trevett | Khronos President NVIDIA Vice President Developer Ecosystem [email protected] | @neilt3d © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 1 Khronos Mission Software Silicon Khronos is an Industry Consortium of over 100 companies creating royalty-free, open standard APIs to enable software to access hardware acceleration for graphics, parallel compute and vision © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 2 http://accelerateyourworld.org/ © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 3 Vision Pipeline Challenges and Opportunities Growing Camera Diversity Diverse Vision Processors Sensor Proliferation 22 Flexible sensor and camera Use efficient acceleration to Combine vision output control to GENERATE PROCESS with other sensor data an image stream the image stream on device © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 4 OpenVX – Low Power Vision Acceleration • Higher level abstraction API - Targeted at real-time mobile and embedded platforms • Performance portability across diverse architectures - Multi-core CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and DSP arrays, ISPs, Dedicated hardware… • Extends portable vision acceleration to very low power domains - Doesn’t require high-power CPU/GPU Complex - Lower precision requirements than OpenCL - Low-power host can setup and manage frame-rate graph Vision Engine Middleware Application X100 Dedicated Vision Processing Hardware Efficiency Vision DSPs X10 GPU Compute Accelerator Multi-core Accelerator Power Efficiency Power X1 CPU Accelerator Computation Flexibility © Copyright Khronos Group 2016 - Page 5 OpenVX Graphs
    [Show full text]
  • Migrating from Opengl to Vulkan Mark Kilgard, January 19, 2016 About the Speaker Who Is This Guy?
    Migrating from OpenGL to Vulkan Mark Kilgard, January 19, 2016 About the Speaker Who is this guy? Mark Kilgard Principal Graphics Software Engineer in Austin, Texas Long-time OpenGL driver developer at NVIDIA Author and implementer of many OpenGL extensions Collaborated on the development of Cg First commercial GPU shading language Recently working on GPU-accelerated vector graphics (Yes, and wrote GLUT in ages past) 2 Motivation for Talk Coming from OpenGL, Preparing for Vulkan What kinds of apps benefit from Vulkan? How to prepare your OpenGL code base to transition to Vulkan How various common OpenGL usage scenarios are re-thought in Vulkan Re-thinking your application structure for Vulkan 3 Analogy Different Valid Approaches 4 Analogy Fixed-function OpenGL Pre-assembled toy car fun out of the box, not much room for customization 5 AZDO = Approaching Zero Driver Overhead Analogy Modern AZDO OpenGL with Programmable Shaders LEGO Kit you build it yourself, comes with plenty of useful, pre-shaped pieces 6 Analogy Vulkan Pine Wood Derby Kit you build it yourself to race from raw materials power tools used to assemble, adult supervision highly recommended 7 Analogy Different Valid Approaches Fixed-function OpenGL Modern AZDO OpenGL with Vulkan Programmable Shaders 8 Beneficial Vulkan Scenarios Has Parallelizable CPU-bound Graphics Work yes Can your graphics Is your graphics work start work creation be CPU bound? parallelized? yes Vulkan friendly 9 Beneficial Vulkan Scenarios Maximizing a Graphics Platform Budget You’ll yes do whatever Your graphics start it takes to squeeze platform is fixed out max perf. yes Vulkan friendly 10 Beneficial Vulkan Scenarios Managing Predictable Performance, Free of Hitching You put yes You can a premium on manage your start avoiding graphics resource hitches allocations yes Vulkan friendly 11 Unlikely to Benefit Scenarios to Reconsider Coding to Vulkan 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Building the Metaverse One Open Standard at a Time
    Building the Metaverse One Open Standard at a Time Khronos APIs and 3D Asset Formats for XR Neil Trevett Khronos President NVIDIA VP Developer Ecosystems [email protected]| @neilt3d April 2020 © Khronos® Group 2020 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License © The Khronos® Group Inc. 2020 - Page 1 Khronos Connects Software to Silicon Open interoperability standards to enable software to effectively harness the power of multiprocessors and accelerator silicon 3D graphics, XR, parallel programming, vision acceleration and machine learning Non-profit, member-driven standards-defining industry consortium Open to any interested company All Khronos standards are royalty-free Well-defined IP Framework protects participant’s intellectual property >150 Members ~ 40% US, 30% Europe, 30% Asia This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License © The Khronos® Group Inc. 2020 - Page 2 Khronos Active Initiatives 3D Graphics 3D Assets Portable XR Parallel Computation Desktop, Mobile, Web Authoring Augmented and Vision, Inferencing, Machine Embedded and Safety Critical and Delivery Virtual Reality Learning Guidelines for creating APIs to streamline system safety certification This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License © The Khronos® Group Inc. 2020 - Page 3 Pervasive Vulkan Desktop and Mobile GPUs http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/ Platforms Apple Desktop Android (via porting Media Players Consoles (Android 7.0+) layers) (Vulkan 1.1 required on Android Q) Virtual Reality Cloud Services Game Streaming Embedded Engines Croteam Serious Engine Note: The version of Vulkan available will depend on platform and vendor This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License © The Khronos® Group Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Khronos Open API Standards for Mobile Graphics, Compute And
    Open API Standards for Mobile Graphics, Compute and Vision Processing GTC, March 2014 Neil Trevett Vice President Mobile Ecosystem, NVIDIA President Khronos © Copyright Khronos Group 2014 - Page 1 Khronos Connects Software to Silicon Open Consortium creating ROYALTY-FREE, OPEN STANDARD APIs for hardware acceleration Defining the roadmap for low-level silicon interfaces needed on every platform Graphics, compute, rich media, vision, sensor and camera processing Rigorous specifications AND conformance tests for cross- vendor portability Acceleration APIs BY the Industry FOR the Industry Well over a BILLION people use Khronos APIs Every Day… © Copyright Khronos Group 2014 - Page 2 Khronos Standards 3D Asset Handling - 3D authoring asset interchange - 3D asset transmission format with compression Visual Computing - 3D Graphics - Heterogeneous Parallel Computing Over 100 companies defining royalty-free APIs to connect software to silicon Camera Control API Acceleration in HTML5 - 3D in browser – no Plug-in - Heterogeneous computing for JavaScript Sensor Processing - Vision Acceleration - Camera Control - Sensor Fusion © Copyright Khronos Group 2014 - Page 3 The OpenGL Family OpenGL 4.4 is the industry’s most advanced 3D API Cross platform – Windows, Linux, Mac, Android Foundation for productivity apps Target for AAA engines and games The most pervasively available 3D API – 1.6 Billion devices and counting Almost every mobile and embedded device – inc. Android, iOS Bringing proven desktop functionality to mobile JavaScript binding to OpenGL
    [Show full text]
  • The Opengl ES Shading Language
    The OpenGL ES® Shading Language Language Version: 3.20 Document Revision: 12 246 JuneAugust 2015 Editor: Robert J. Simpson, Qualcomm OpenGL GLSL editor: John Kessenich, LunarG GLSL version 1.1 Authors: John Kessenich, Dave Baldwin, Randi Rost 1 Copyright (c) 2013-2015 The Khronos Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. This specification is protected by copyright laws and contains material proprietary to the Khronos Group, Inc. It or any components may not be reproduced, republished, distributed, transmitted, displayed, broadcast, or otherwise exploited in any manner without the express prior written permission of Khronos Group. You may use this specification for implementing the functionality therein, without altering or removing any trademark, copyright or other notice from the specification, but the receipt or possession of this specification does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manufacture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. Khronos Group grants express permission to any current Promoter, Contributor or Adopter member of Khronos to copy and redistribute UNMODIFIED versions of this specification in any fashion, provided that NO CHARGE is made for the specification and the latest available update of the specification for any version of the API is used whenever possible. Such distributed specification may be reformatted AS LONG AS the contents of the specification are not changed in any way. The specification may be incorporated into a product that is sold as long as such product includes significant independent work developed by the seller. A link to the current version of this specification on the Khronos Group website should be included whenever possible with specification distributions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Opengl ES Shading Language
    The OpenGL ES® Shading Language Language Version: 3.00 Document Revision: 6 29 January 2016 Editor: Robert J. Simpson, Qualcomm OpenGL GLSL editor: John Kessenich, LunarG GLSL version 1.1 Authors: John Kessenich, Dave Baldwin, Randi Rost Copyright © 2008-2016 The Khronos Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. This specification is protected by copyright laws and contains material proprietary to the Khronos Group, Inc. It or any components may not be reproduced, republished, distributed, transmitted, displayed, broadcast, or otherwise exploited in any manner without the express prior written permission of Khronos Group. You may use this specification for implementing the functionality therein, without altering or removing any trademark, copyright or other notice from the specification, but the receipt or possession of this specification does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manufacture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. Khronos Group grants express permission to any current Promoter, Contributor or Adopter member of Khronos to copy and redistribute UNMODIFIED versions of this specification in any fashion, provided that NO CHARGE is made for the specification and the latest available update of the specification for any version of the API is used whenever possible. Such distributed specification may be reformatted AS LONG AS the contents of the specification are not changed in any way. The specification may be incorporated into a product that is sold as long as such product includes significant independent work developed by the seller. A link to the current version of this specification on the Khronos Group website should be included whenever possible with specification distributions.
    [Show full text]
  • EGL 1.5 Specification
    Khronos Native Platform Graphics Interface (EGL Version 1.5 - August 27, 2014) Editor: Jon Leech 2 Copyright (c) 2002-2014 The Khronos Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. This specification is protected by copyright laws and contains material proprietary to the Khronos Group, Inc. It or any components may not be reproduced, repub- lished, distributed, transmitted, displayed, broadcast or otherwise exploited in any manner without the express prior written permission of Khronos Group. You may use this specification for implementing the functionality therein, without altering or removing any trademark, copyright or other notice from the specification, but the receipt or possession of this specification does not convey any rights to reproduce, disclose, or distribute its contents, or to manufacture, use, or sell anything that it may describe, in whole or in part. Khronos Group grants express permission to any current Promoter, Contributor or Adopter member of Khronos to copy and redistribute UNMODIFIED versions of this specification in any fashion, provided that NO CHARGE is made for the specification and the latest available update of the specification for any version of the API is used whenever possible. Such distributed specification may be re- formatted AS LONG AS the contents of the specification are not changed in any way. The specification may be incorporated into a product that is sold as long as such product includes significant independent work developed by the seller. A link to the current version of this specification on the Khronos Group web-site should be included whenever possible with specification distributions. Khronos Group makes no, and expressly disclaims any, representations or war- ranties, express or implied, regarding this specification, including, without limita- tion, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement of any intellectual property.
    [Show full text]
  • The State of Vulkan on Apple 03June 2021
    The State of Vulkan on Apple Devices Why you should be developing for the Apple ecosystem with Vulkan, and how to do it. Richard S. Wright Jr., LunarG June 3, 2021 If you are reading this, you likely already know what Vulkan is -- a low-overhead, high-performance, cross-platform, graphics and compute API designed to take maximum advantage of today's highly parallel and scalable graphics and compute hardware. To be sure, there are other APIs with this goal such as Microsoft’s DirectX and Apple’s Metal API. For a long time OpenGL matured to meet the needs of rapidly evolving hardware and met well the challenges of cross-platform development of high-performance graphics applications. OpenGL will remain viable for a very long time for many applications (and can actually be layered on top of Vulkan), but to take maximum advantage of modern hardware, a new and somewhat reinvented approach is called for. Everyone does not need the level of control that Vulkan provides, but if you do, you can think of Vulkan as a lower-level successor to OpenGL in that it attempts to enable highly portable, yet high-performance, application development across desktop and mobile device platforms. Writing platform specific code does have its advantages, and vendors such as Microsoft and Apple certainly adore having best of breed titles available exclusively for their customers as it adds value to their ecosystem. For developers though, it is often in our best interests to make our products available as widely as possible. Aside from gaming consoles with their mostly closed development environments, Windows, Linux, Apple, and Android combined represent most of the market for developers of end user software and games today.
    [Show full text]