NVIDIA’s Linux Vulkan beta driver build has moved from the 450 series that it’s been on for a while to the current 455 branch. This Vulkan beta driver also adds the new VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64 and VK_KHR_copy_commands2 extensions that were introduced in recent weeks with Vulkan API spec updates. This beta driver also now allows importing external host memory as cached. Learn more about what this new driver has to offer.

AMD just released their latest Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition driver (20.9.2), and it includes three notable extensions: VK_KHR_buffer_device_address, VK_EXT_robustness2 and VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64. Download the 20.9.2 Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition driver from AMD.com.

Today, the Khronos OpenCL Working Group is happy to announce the release of the finalized OpenCL 3.0 specifications, including a new unified OpenCL C 3.0 language specification, together with an early initial release of a Khronos OpenCL SDK to enable developers to quickly get up to speed using OpenCL.

​NVIDIA is presenting the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) October 5-9, 2020 online. For those developers looking to learn more about Ray Tracing with Vulkan, there will be 2 Vulkan sessions on October 6th. This session is a highlight reel of code migration from DirectX to Vulkan ray tracing - including missteps, obstacles and insights encountered along the way. We will also cover recommendations for tooling setup and techniques to get your ray tracing journey smoothly underway. More information is available here.

Blender2MSFS - this Blender addon allows you to create 3D assets for Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020). The addon is designed for Blender 2.83, and above. MSFS is using the Khronos’ glTF 2.0 file format with multiple custom extensions and extras for special material functions. While Blender 2.8x already ships with a glTF exporter, some changes had to be made to the exporter to facilitate some of the used extensions. These changes come fully integrated into this addon, in the form of modified call functions. These functions will make use of the existing Khronos glTF 2.0 exporter, while inserting some of the custom extensions for MSFS

OpenVX is a mature computer vision and machine learning API standard by the Khronos group, developed to be a novel, open and royalty-free standard for cross-platform acceleration. In this webinar, aimed at engine and middleware developers, application developers, and embedded compute engineers, we will present the latest features in OpenVX 1.3 and how these features are being leveraged by OpenVX adopters. Join Neil Trevett, President of the Khronos Group and Kiriti Nagesh Gowda, OpenVX Working Group chair on October 14th. Please sign-up early as space is limited.

The final entry in a 3 part series on porting Detroit: Become Human from PS4 to PC. In Part 1, Ronan Marchalot from Quantic Dream explained why they decided to use Vulkan® and talked about shader pipelines and descriptors. In part 2, Lou Kramer from AMD discussed non-uniform resource indexing on PC and on AMD cards specifically. Here in part 3 Ronan Marchalot discusses shader scalarization, multithreaded render list, memory management, and more.

Codeplay’s Charles Macfarlane, CBO, and Illya Rudkin, Safety-Critical Software Development Lead, have contributed to this white paper as part of the Autosens conference proceedings. The paper emphasizes the need for the automotive industry to embrace open standards including SYCL in order to be able to meet the needs of the next generation of vehicles. Learn more and download the paper.

​The second part of a three part series on porting Detroit: Become Human from PS4 to PC. In Part 1, Ronan Marchalot from Quantic Dream explained why they decided to use Vulkan® and talked about shader pipelines and descriptors. Here in part 2, Lou Kramer from AMD will discuss non-uniform resource indexing on PC and on AMD cards specifically.

This blog series discusses the port of the game Detroit: Become Human  from PlayStation® 4 to P and is written jointly by Ronan Marchalot, 3D engine director, and 3D engine senior developers Nicolas Vizerie and Jonathan Siret from Quantic Dream, along with Lou Kramer, who is a developer technology engineer from AMD.  The first instalment in this series walks the reader through choosing an API: Already having an OpenGL working version, the choice is between Direct X 12 and Vulkan. Read the post to learn which was chosen.

Khronos has shipped the provisional version of the Vulkan Portability Extension version 1.0 and it is shipping today in both MoltenVK and gfx-portability. If you want to try out the extension, build MoltenVK or download gfx-portability-0.8.1 and redirect the Vulkan loader to a JSON manifest using the regular ICD logic, as if MoltenVK and gfx-portability were native Vulkan drivers. Learn more about the Vulkan Portability Initiative and explore the value of layered implementations to the graphics community in this blog.

With this release, NVIDIA has added support for Vulkan and Vulkan Ray Tracing in the Shader Profiler. Vulkan GLSL shaders are supported in the same way that was previously possible for D3D12 and DXR HLSL shaders. Users that provide debug information for their shaders can see detailed performance data mapped directly to the GLSL source lines it is associated with. This allows users to pinpoint performance issues caused by stalls in the shader instruction pipeline.

The Guide to Vulkan Synchronization Validation, a LunarG white paper, provides an overview of synchronization and why it is important along with a quick-start guide for new users. The reader will learn about synchronization validation and associated validation messages, how to use synchronization validation, and how to optimize it. Learn more about the whitepaper and why correct synchronization is important in this blog post.

The Khronos ANARI working group is defining an open, royalty-free API standard for cross-vendor access to state-of-the-art rendering engines. ANARI will enable experts in domains such as scientific visualization to leverage the latest rendering techniques without needing to use low-level rendering APIs. Graphics vendors will use the ANARI API to enable visualization engines, libraries, and applications with portable access to a diverse range of rendering technologies, including ray tracing. Recently ANARI Working Group members shared an update on their progress towards an initial specification at a Khronos Webinar. Have a look at this Khronos Blog to watch or listen to the webinar, or see a recap of the discussion and audience questions here.

Laminar Research have now released a huge upgrade to their flight simulator with X-Plane 11.50, which brings in lots of rendering changes and advancements.

They completely rewrote their rendering engine to provide Vulkan (on Windows and Linux systems) and Metal (on Mac). This should provide X-Plane 11 players with smoother frame rates, with far less stuttering and better performance overall. For the Linux version you need at least NVIDIA 440.26 and for AMD they’re supporting the ‘official AMD GPU drivers’ along with amdvlk but they didn’t state any particular version.