Learn more about the Vulkan API | Hacker News Reader

Learn more about the Vulkan API

blog.imgtec.com

41 points1ace18 comments

>"Imagination is a promoter member of the Khronos™ Group and a keen supporter of open standards for mobile graphics."

Fantastic, so the next PowerVR driver will be in mainline Linux then, right?

I still haven't forgiven Imagination Technologies for the Poulsobo chipset (GMA500), and yes, I realise it wasn't all the fault of one party

You may be operating with an erroneously optimistic definition of "open standards"! Open standards in computing means proprietary implementations of patent-laden published protocols.

(Well, it doesn't preclude open source or patent free, but doesn't imply them either).

Sigh, yeah, I know. I needed to have a dig at them - I spent about a year on and off trying to get a Dell Mini 9 to work well. Eventually I just gave up and bought something else, but I don't like the idea of stuff going to landfill just because two big companies couldn't come to an agreement (Intel and Imagination).

> One API for all platforms

Last I heard, Apple was not going to support Vulkan. So for iOS and OS X, you'd be SOL.

Please correct me if I'm wrong though, I'd very much like to be.

I don't think Apple has said that. Vulkan is not here yet, so they adopted Metal. They may still adopt Vulkan later on if game developers request it.

As far as I can tell, that's speculation because Apple is the only vendor not talking about Vulkan support.

Apple has always been weird. It's not that they don't care about graphics drivers, but rather it seems they have an entirely different set of priorities for their graphics drivers than the other vendors do. Acceleration on OS X seems to be for creative apps and casual games, which aren't the same market as Windows. Over on iOS, developers are quick to forgive Apple for their faults because of all the money, and because it's still easier than developing for Android.

OpenGL 3.3 took 3 years to hit OS X. I'm not convinced that Vulkan won't hit iOS and OS X, but I bet that Apple's going to take its time and support Vulkan when it's nice and ready. Android is getting Vulkan now because it doesn't have Metal, and Windows is getting it because the 3D vendors can make it happen.

You're probably right that Apple will wait, but even if their Vulkan implementation were hypothetically around the corner and planned for iOS 10, Apple still wouldn't be talking about it. Apple rarely talks about anything before it's close to shipping.

DX12 is already here, they really need to hurry up and ship Vulkan.

DX is not nor ever will be there. It's a proprietary MS platform only API which will never target the range of platforms vulkan aims for.

It does pretty much corner the market on PC gaming, though, which is the single biggest segment of people that care about hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.

OpenGL seems to be making a bit of a comeback, with Steam trying to expand offerings for Mac and Linux, and presumably, their Steam Machines. Although I'm doubtful how many people that build multi-platform titles are actually doing the nitty-gritty graphics programming on those different platforms - most of the titles I've seen are using engines like Unity or Unreal that abstract out already.

It's easy to just see it from the pc market perspective but there are a lot of non pc gaming platforms; mobile and consoles.

Also is not only about gaming it's also about those fancy GUIs on cars fridges coffee machines etc

But are most of those actually going to use Vulkan? Mobile devices had OpenGL ES, which was similar but not the same. Consoles had their own graphics APIs, which were again, similar, but different.

Maybe VR will be the next frontier for pushing the envelope on graphics performance, but for at least 20 years, it's been PC games leading the way forward.

Appliances should not have GUIs... shakes cane at those damn kids on the lawn

"It does pretty much corner the market on PC gaming, though, which is the single biggest segment of people that care about hardware-accelerated 3D graphics."

There are 2 billion cars in the world "soonish". The digitial only dashboards will probably not run on DirectX.

http://www.audi.com/com/brand/en/vorsprung_durch_technik/con...

This is an improvement on mechanical gauges how?

Just commenting that there are other notable industries than just Windows PC gaming and mobile handsets that use GPU hardware and that they will probably only grow in the future.

And the rest of the world says "Doesn't matter; shipped the game."

If you check the size of the mobile game market and non Xbox console market you will see that it does matter.

They've said they're aiming to ship just before the end of the year.

If its on-time, it should be released in the next month or so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com