TensorFlow announced that you will now be able to leverage mobile GPUs for select models with the release of developer preview of the GPU backend for TensorFlow Lite. This new backend leverages. OpenGL ES 3.1 Compute Shaders on Android devices.

ARM has open-sourced a new compute library with GPU support via OpenCL as well as CPU support with NEON usage. The ARM Compute Library works on both Linux and Android. Source: Phoronix.

GAPID is a collection of tools that allows you to inspect, tweak and replay calls from an application to a graphics driver. GAPID is still in development but already can be used to debug many Android OpenGL ES and Vulkan applications.

With the very latest open-source Chromium web-browser development code, WebGL 2.0 support is now being turned on by default for desktop (non-Android) builds.

Unreal Engine 4.13 adds numerous new rendering features, including GPU morph targets, Blueprint drawing to render targets, and mesh decals. There are lots of optimizations to dynamic shadows, support for full-precision materials, and OpenGL ES 3.1 support for Android developers.

With the announcement of Android N back a few months ago, Google mentioned that Android would be supporting the new Vulkan graphics API . How does Vulkan perform compared to OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0? This article aims to find out. The Vulkan, OpenGL, & OpenGL ES BOF from SIGGRAPH 2016 has an update on Vulkan.

Android Authority has an overview on what OpenVX is and how it works. Android Authority is looking to post more articles in the future on OpenVX.

Google has unveiled more details about Android N at its Google I/O developer’s conference including a discussion of performance in Android N 7.0 getting a boost from Vulkan. The two presentations from Google I/O are now online:

- Vulkan on N announcement in the keynote

- “Make shinier, faster mobile games with Vulkan”


You will find the Android Vulkan API SDK here.

Samsung us showing that Vulkan isn’t just for gaming — it has real-world benefits in daily phone use. Samsung engineers demonstrated a new TouchWiz launcher being developed with Vulkan that not only improves performance but offers a notable battery life boost to your phone.

Android N Developer Preview 2 is now out with support for Vulkan. With Android N, Vulkan is now part of the platform; you can try it out on supported devices running Developer Preview 2. Learn more about Vulkan support with the Android ‘NDK’, and on the Android Developers Blog ‘Optimize, Develop, and Debug with Vulkan Developer Tools’.

Google has released the latest Android Studio 2.0, the official IDE for Android development. Among many of the improvements is an added a preview of the new GPU Debugger. For graphics intensive applications, you can now visually step through your OpenGL ES code to optimize your app or game.

NVIDIA is rolling out the world’s first production Vulkan drivers today as part of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OTA update to SHIELD Android TV. This makes SHIELD Android TV the first consumer platform with production installed Vulkan drivers – making it an ideal platform for Android developers to get easy access to this new-generation graphics API This continues NVIDIA’s rollout of Vulkan drivers across multiple platforms, including Windows 7-10, desktop and embedded Linux and now Android.

LunarG announced that the company is splitting into two teams to better address the needs of Vulkan, the new graphics API from Khronos. The Desktop group will continue as LunarG, sponsored by Valve, and the team members from the Mobile group will move over to Google to work on Android. LunarG will continue to work closely with Khronos to forge the new Vulkan ecosystem.

Unity has a feedback poll running on their site asking for your input on “Support for the Vulkan API on Android devices.” Have your say, let them know.

The open source C++ creative coding toolkit Cinder has recently released version 0.9. This release adds support for OpenGL ES 2 and ES 3, in addition to the latest desktop versions of OpenGL. Cinder supports targeting Windows, OS X, iOS and WinRT, with Linux and Android support under active development. In addition, this release adds support for Google’s ANGLE project, allowing deployment of OpenGL ES 3 applications on Windows and WinRT through a DirectX emulation layer. Cinder is released under the BSD License and is used by professionals in the creative and technology industries for everything from interactive installations to user interface prototyping to live concert visuals.