The Vulkan 1.2 specification was launched on January 15th, 2020, and integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Below you will find everything you need to come up to speed on Vulkan and to forge ahead and explore whether Vulkan is right for your engine or application.
On November 23rd, 2020, Khronos released the final versions of the set of Vulkan, GLSL and SPIR-V extension specifications that seamlessly integrate ray tracing into the existing Vulkan framework
Specification Release Blog Presentation Hybrid Rendering Blog Learn More
“Vulkan 1.2 brings together nearly two dozen high-priority features developed over the past two years into one, unified core Vulkan standard, setting a cutting-edge bar for functionality in the industry’s only open GPU API for cross-platform 3D and compute acceleration. Khronos will continue delivering regular Vulkan ecosystem updates with this proven, developer-focused methodology to both meet the needs and expand the horizons of real-world applications.”
Behind every great API are the drivers that bring it life on your GPU. Download the latest drivers for your system that now include Vulkan 1.1.
Download demos and open source samples to take your new Vulkan API for a test drive - and get a heads up on Vulkan resources.
Looking to take your game to the next level? Look no further: Here are several game engines that currently support Vulkan.
The Vulkan SDK provides Vulkan application developers with essential tools to accelerate the development process. There are Windows, Linux, and macOS versions of the Vulkan SDK.
Develop for Windows, Linux & macOS
Google gives you everything you need to incorporate Vulkan into your Android games and other apps where graphics performance is key. Visit the Android developer website to download the API, samples, and documentation: resources to help you hit the ground running.
Want to create your own tools and SDKs for Vulkan? Here’s a link to Vulkan’s home on GitHub and to other resources you’ll need.
SDK creation materials in GitHub:
Khronos welcomes any company creating graphics hardware or systems to implement and ship the Vulkan API. The Vulkan specification is free for anyone to download and implement. If you want to use the Vulkan name or logo on your implementation, and enjoy the protection of the Khronos Intellectual Property Framework, you can become a Vulkan Adopter.
Khronos has placed an unprecedented amount of materials into open source so you can provide feedback, showcase your work, fix bugs, and extend Vulkan capabilities for the future. Get engaged AND show the world what YOU are doing with Vulkan.
The Vulkan Portability Initiative fights platform fragmentation by encouraging layered implementations of Vulkan functionality over Metal, DX12 and other APIs. Vulkan Portability enables Vulkan applications to be reliably deployed across diverse platforms through the ongoing development of standardized queries for available layered API functionality, ensuring all provided functionality is conformance tested, and providing development layers for the Vulkan SDK including on macOS.
Vulkan Ray Tracing is a set of extensions that seamlessly integrate ray tracing functionality into Vulkan for portable, cross-vendor, cross-platform ray tracing acceleration. Final specifications have been released, beta drivers and initial tools are shipping, and support will soon be added to the Vulkan SDK. All developers interested in ray tracing are encouraged to use these final stable extensions.
“AMD is excited to provide support for the Vulkan 1.2 specification in our upcoming Vulkan 1.2 supported driver for a broad range of AMD graphics hardware, including the AMD Radeon™ RX 5700 Series and AMD Radeon™ RX 5500 Series. Vulkan 1.2 brings many new features, including Dynamic Descriptor Indexing and finer type support for 16-bit and 8-bit types – and are designed to enable developers to better take advantage of modern GPU features and deliver richer graphics experiences to end users. We look forward to continued adoption of the Vulkan API and the new graphics experiences possible with the latest Vulkan 1.2 feature set.”
“Stadia is thrilled to see the long-awaited features in Vulkan 1.2. Not only are they a game changer for Stadia but for the Vulkan ecosystem as a whole. Vulkan 1.2 brings remarkable improvements for HLSL support in Vulkan and the increased flexibility and performance gains will enable developers to take greater advantage of the GPU than ever before. Stadia can’t wait to see how developers leverage the new timeline semaphore, descriptor indexing, and finer type subgroup operations in graphics and compute for their next generation titles.”
“Imagination welcomes the launch of Vulkan 1.2. It’s a great update and will really benefit developers. Our latest GPU architecture – IMG A-Series – will fully support Vulkan 1.2 and will help developers achieve the best performance and power savings. Our best-in-class tools, such as PVRTune and PVRCarbon, are designed with Vulkan in mind, giving developers detailed information of profiling and debugging.”
“Intel is delighted by the release of Vulkan 1.2 and looks forward to seeing developers take advantage of it to deliver even richer visual computing experiences. With the broadest installed base of PC graphics processors capable of supporting Vulkan 1.2, and with products based on our breakthrough Xe architecture coming shortly, we’re excited to play a key role in enabling next-generation visual computing experiences for millions of users.”
“NVIDIA’s Vulkan 1.2 drivers are available today with full functionality for both Windows and Linux. With Vulkan enabling mission-critical applications on NVIDIA GPUs across desktop, embedded and cloud platforms, we’re driving innovative functionality to fuel the growing momentum of this key open standard.”
“We are very excited about the new capabilities in Vulkan 1.2. The VMA and scheduling features allow us to implement next-generation graphical and computing solutions across a wide array of hardware for our Cider game engine.”