Now that Vulkan is out, that's far less important than it used to be.
Now that Vulkan is out, that's far less important than it used to be.
NVidia doesn't care about OpenCL.
Google doesn't care, and pushes Renderscript instead.
Apple doesn't care, it created OpenCL, but since Khronos doesn't dance their music, they rather push Metal Compute Shaders.
Microsoft has C++AMP and DX Compute.
Additionally CUDA was designed to be targeted by multiple languages, while OpenCL had to wait for OpenCL 2.0 for it to happen.
Also the graphical debuggers for OpenCL could get some love.
I know which GPU makers I will keep giving my money to.
Anyway, Vulkan provides lower level access to the compute functionality. And MS and Apple can get lost with their selfish NIH approach. The rest are supporting Vulkan, including all GPU makers.
So far I have only seen Vulkan on GNU/Linux and Android 7.0+ deployments.
And I am willing to bet it won't change, specially since most of us only care about middleware engines nowadays.
Guess which API was being discussed at Unite 2016 LA? Hint: it wasn't Vulkan.
Vulkan is widely available on Windows, not sure how you missed that.
You can also use the Vulkan API today on iOS and OS X via a third-party library that translates between the Vulkan APIs and Metal, called MoltenVK.[0]
MoltenVK is not complete, but it covers the majority of the functionality (including SPIR-V shader ingestion) and I don't see any technical roadblocks to most of the remaining work.
I have not missed, just haven't seen too many caring about it on the Windows game development forums.
> You can also use the Vulkan API today on iOS and OS X via a third-party library that translates between the Vulkan APIs and Metal, called MoltenVK.[0]
Zero advantages versus middleware engines.
I guess you visit wrong forums. All major engine developers are busy with it.
Those game engines support the graphics APIs from, PS3, PS4, PSP, PSP Vita, Wii, 3DS, OpenGL, DX9, DX10, DX11, DX12, WebGL, Metal, Vulkan.
Adding support for Vulkan is just yet another bullet point on that list, just like they are busy adding Metal support, as it was discussed at Unite LA.
The people that actually use those engines to make games, don't care what APIs are abstracted by those engines, as long as, their game is fast, takes full advantage of the GPU and targets the game system they want to sell to.
OpenGL ES?
(also with compute shaders in the latest version...)
You keep repeating it, but it's nonsense, because it always matters how hard is for the engine to target multiple platforms.
Yet that is what professional game developers care about, not API wars.
Maybe you should attend a GDC event.
I guess the iPhone market won't get Vulkan hence the interest?
MoltenVK doesn't currently support Vulkan compute shaders, I don't see why it couldn't in the future—compute shaders are SPIR-V and actually easier to support than graphics shaders IMO. I suspect they just haven't gotten to it yet.
Everyone.
> And I am willing to bet it won't change
MS and Apple will sleep until they'll realize, their NIH is threatened by competition. They don't play nice otherwise. But you expressed multiple times that you like lock-in, so I doubt you'll appreciate it.
Bad Linux support, Bad Debugging, unreliable processing times between vendors (> 40% between same gen. GPUs), missing or buggy functions.