The Vulkan Working Group has just released the VK_KHR_performance_query extension, which provides a cross-vendor common mechanism to expose performance metrics. These may be used to obtain data from a Vulkan device, typically a graphics card or SoC, to measure the workload demand and assess the impact of application modifications and optimizations.

Last month I wrote about a new book on Data science and visual computing. The book tells us, as we already well know, we are awash in data. It's like the weather, we know it, we can't manage it. We are struggling to get a grip on it, understand it, use it and exploit it, but it is being generated faster than we can harness it. What's more, there are a dozen or more ways to funnel that data to a display with multiple pipelines and APIs. It is a hodgepodge of software that has evolved from the early 1980s (I know because I contributed to the mess we have today). Here comes Khronos to save the day with an exploratory committee to discuss the standardization of an analytic rendering API for data visualization. Khronos is inviting all interested parties to participate. There is no cost or IP obligations to share perspectives, requirements, and use-cases to help determine whether there is an industry need for such an API and to help set the direction for any standardization activities.

SuperComputing (SC19) is the largest gathering of high performance computing experts in the world and it kicks off this weekend, Sunday, November 17 in Denver, CO.