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Comment by santaclaus | Hacker News Reader

What does Vulkan Compute get you over CUDA?

Zero cost interoperability with your graphics API is a big one. Using CUDA for compute, and then mapping that data into OpenGL to draw it is way slower than it should be.

Not to mention NVidia did not allow simultaneous compute and graphics workloads on the same SM until the newest 10 series GPUs while AMD had this since, at least, the very first GCN (2011?)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-...

Support on things not running nVidia chips. And it's supported on Android N, so you get a good chunk of mobile.

8% of Android users are on N, it's not much of a chunk.

Android N is the upcoming release

That's tens of millions of devices and probably growing - that's a decent chunk IMO

I think you're referring to Marshmallow, which was released last year. N is still in Beta Preview and Vulkan support is landing only in N.

Wong question (CUDA isn't cross platform). I'd ask, how Vulkan compares to OpenCL? I think both intersect in some way, but Vulkan only focuses on GPU (compute and graphics), while OpenCL focuses only on compute but has more generic approach (GPU + CPU).

Vulkan and OpenCL also support the same intermediate format SPIR-V, which allows you to run the exact same kernels on both APIs.

Compatibility with other GPU companies?

Yeah, it's a bit strange how relaxed people are about tying themselves to a single vendor.

It runs on AMD and Intel.

Isn't CUDA evil?

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