Khronos Releases Vulkan 1.0 API

The Khronos Group has released version 1.0 of the Vulkan API. At the same time, AMD and Nvidia released beta drivers with Vulkan support. The API is the successor to OpenGL and competes with Microsoft’s DirectX 12 and Apple’s Metal.

In addition to announcing the final specifications of Vulkan 1.0, Khronos has also released an SDK for developers. All Vulkan documentation is available on GitHub. Developers can get started with the new api immediately, but users can also try Vulkan, because both AMD and Nvidia released beta drivers with Vulkan support on Tuesday and the first game with preliminary Vulkan support has now appeared on Steam. This is the latest public beta of The Talos Principle.

Vulkan is a low level API for controlling the GPU. The API is largely derived from AMD’s Mantle and provides direct access to deeper layers of graphics hardware, reducing overhead. Other advantages of the api are that it is royalty-free and that it is an open standard that can be used on all platforms, if they support it. Currently these are Windows, Linux and Android. Apple has been focusing on its own Metal API since 2014 and therefore seems to no longer want to support Vulkan in iOS and OS X.

Now that Vulkan 1.0 has been released, it is expected that more games with support for the new api will follow soon. Unity, Epic, Valve and Dice, among others, have pledged to support Vulkan with their game engines. It remains to be seen to what extent this yields a speed gain compared to other low-level APIs.

The API was already available in open beta and was initially known as glNext. The Khronos Group is a consortium in which numerous companies are represented. Various companies support the group or contribute to the development of the Vulkan API themselves. These include Google, Qualcomm and Imagination. The latter is the maker of the PowerVR GPUs for smartphone socs.