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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

To gain adoption.

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.

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When crooked interests hinder adoption, you should blame the crooked interests, not the technology.

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.

What rest?

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.

> What rest?

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.

You keep forgetting Sony and Nintendo.

I don't think the lock-in in the case of graphics APIs is too bad, because even for large codebases implementing a new graphics API support is often done by one or two persons.

Guess which API was being discussed at Unite 2016 LA?

OpenGL ES?

(also with compute shaders in the latest version...)

Metal support.

Metal is useless outside of Apple, so it's DOA adoption wise. Developers will be of course forced to use it when targeting Apple. Adoption however means wide coverage of multiple platforms.

Middleware engines have won the hearts of game developers, it doesn't matter what runs underneath, only for those that do API religion.

> it doesn't matter what runs underneath

You keep repeating it, but it's nonsense, because it always matters how hard is for the engine to target multiple platforms.

It is nonsense to you, because all your arguments fail flat when there is an abstraction layer that hides away what actual APIs are being used.

Yet that is what professional game developers care about, not API wars.

Maybe you should attend a GDC event.

Again, try working on that abstraction layer, and then you'll see what it takes. Claims that it's trivial or it's normal and should be that way have no substance. It's like saying that Web developers enjoy browsers not following standards and the need to address all those quirks is trivial. No normal developer wants that.

Huh I admit this is really surprising.

I guess the iPhone market won't get Vulkan hence the interest?

MoltenVK[0] is a way to use the Vulkan API and shaders on Metal.

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.

[0] https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/

> So far I have only seen Vulkan on GNU/Linux and Android 7.0+ deployments.

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.

[0] https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/

> Vulkan is widely available on Windows, not sure how you missed that.

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 have not missed, just haven't seen too many caring about it on the Windows game development forums.

I guess you visit wrong forums. All major engine developers are busy with it.

No, you are the one still not getting how the game industry works.

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.

No, you don't get it, since adding anything to the list increases costs and slows down development. But I guess since you aren't working on those engines, you just assume magically adding a bullet point is all it takes.

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