Khronos Group Delays Vulkan, Pending Legal Review

[N.Broekhuijsen]

The Khronos group announced that it would not be making its end-of-year target to have Vulkan wrapped up.

Khronos Group Delays Vulkan, Pending Legal Review : Read more

 

[James Mason]

Wow, so the Vulkan API renders 2D hand drawn pictures eh?
Neat.

 

[mitch074]

DirectX 12 will remain the dominant API... On PC. Other stuff (like, say, Android) will use Vulkan instead. Next-gen cosoles (if not current ones - XBOne won't) will probably use it, too.

 

[xHDx]

Well, this is Mantle with a few touch-ups was it not?

That just got into around 10 games or so before they decided to transform it into this. No the wonder it didn't take long.

 

[beayn]

I find this funny because when 3d cards first game out, they *had* direct access to the GPU. Then developers claimed it took too long to create a game and loved having the new API's as they became available. Now they're like... API's restrict us too much, we want low level access.

 

[bit_user]

...

Article says:

so these APIs are all arriving right on queue

I'm pretty sure that should be "... right on cue".

Also, having seen this news elsewhere, I was hoping the article would explain what's involved in a "legal review". Are they looking for patent violations, copyright infringements, ... ? This information would shed more light on the standardization process of bodies such as Kronos.

 

[bit_user]

I find this funny because when 3d cards first game out, they *had* direct access to the GPU. Then developers claimed it took too long to create a game and loved having the new API's as they became available. Now they're like... API's restrict us too much, we want low level access.

I think you're missing the point. This is a standard way to access low-level hardware, so that the same code will run on any GPU that supports it. Previous APIs, like Glide and the like were specific to a single vendor. So, developers would have to write code for each of the different vendors they wanted to run on. And the benefits of that vs. OpenGL or DirectX were small, because GPUs were vastly more primitive.

The closest analogy you'll find is perhaps that it's like reviving Direct3D's retained mode. But I suspect this is much lower-level. And retained mode fell into disfavor because many developers felt the performance benefits (which is the main thing it provided) weren't deemed worth the added API complexity. In contrast, Vulkan simplifies their code by giving them a lower-level interface, so that they don't have to contort their code to fit the model OpenGL provided. So, if you want to break the rendering model of OpenGL, then I think Vulkan both simplifies your code and improves performance.

 

[bit_user]

DirectX 12 will remain the dominant API... On PC. Other stuff (like, say, Android) will use Vulkan instead. Next-gen cosoles (if not current ones - XBOne won't) will probably use it, too.

I wonder... if Windows drivers for the 3 main GPU vendors (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel) all provide good Vulkan support, then why would a developer implement backends for both D3D 12 and Vulkan? The only argument I see is that MS will probably never support Vulkan on any XBoxes. Otherwise, it'd be simpler to use Vulkan everywhere.

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

@bit_user, I've emailed the Khronos group to ask what the legal review entails. I'll update the article when I hear back from them.

 

[Simon Ayres]

Well, this is Mantle with a few touch-ups was it not?

That just got into around 10 games or so before they decided to transform it into this. No the wonder it didn't take long.

No it is not, you may be thinking of GPUOpen which, like Mantle, is an AMD initiative. This, as stated in the article, is The Khronos Group and is a replacement to their API OpenGL.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-gpuopen-open-source-development,30750.html

 

[JMW22]

Wow, so the Vulkan API renders 2D hand drawn pictures eh?
Neat.

No. That looks to me like an artist's rendition of the Unigine Heaven benchmark. They're implying that Vulkan will be good for performance, which is likely true. Vulkan will implement in an open, cross platform way what Direct X does for Windows.

 

[Effex]

I can't wait until the day this becomes popular enough that major titles are released which this can support. I can't wait to ditch Microsoft due to all of the back doors and spyware that is built into Windows. Windows 10 is absurd.

 

[pdegan2814]

I find this funny because when 3d cards first game out, they *had* direct access to the GPU. Then developers claimed it took too long to create a game and loved having the new API's as they became available. Now they're like... API's restrict us too much, we want low level access.

Back then, each 3D card had its own API specifically designed to access its hardware. 3dfx, Rendition, S3 etc all had their own API. DirectX and OpenGL helped developers by standardizing the way they accessed the hardware, making 3d game development MUCH easier. The problem is, over time those APIs have become bloated, and 3D graphics hardware operates MUCH differently. DX12 and Vulkan are designed to clear out a lot of the legacy clutter, and give developers more fine-grained control while still offering a standardized way to access different hardware.

 

[Bloob]

It's not that Vulkan is that much lower level access than OpenGL really, it just leaves the command queue construction and state checking to the user instead of the driver, allowing for better optimization for specific cases. This shifting of responsibilities also reduces the complexity of the driver, which is why every vendor had a basic driver ready very quickly.