New Vulkan Documentation Site
Posted on October 14, 2023
| Sascha
Vulkan Documentation has a new home With something as complex as the Vulkan API, good documentation is crucial for developer adoption. And while Vulkan had pretty good documentation from the get-go, with esp. the spec getting lots of praise, there was a lot of room for improvement. The spec e.g. has become so large that lower-end devices have problems loading it up in the browser, other interesting documentation is scattered around different places and related documentation (e.
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Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.32 released
Posted on September 8, 2023
| Sascha
New client application Version 3.32 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the Google Plays Android version is also pending and should be live soon.
New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.264 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions:
VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix VK_EXT_frame_boundary VK_EXT_depth_bias_control VK_EXT_dynamic_rendering_unused_attachments VK_NV_descriptor_pool_overallocation VK_MSFT_layered_driver VK_QCOM_image_processing2 VK_QCOM_filter_cubic_weights VK_QCOM_ycbcr_degamma VK_QCOM_filter_cubic_clamp VK_QNX_external_memory_screen_buffer Other changes Supported image layouts for the VK_EXT_host_image_copy are now properly displayed using their Vulkan enums.
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Automatic dark theme toggle for all GPU databases
Posted on July 22, 2023
| Sascha
Dark mode theme A few months ago I added a dark/light theme toggle to the launchpad and all databases (Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenCL). After getting mostly positive feedback I decided to replace this manual toggle with an automatic toggle that selects the dark or light theme based on your operating system. So if you’re running your Windows with a dark theme, the databases will now automatically switch to a dark mode too.
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Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.29 released
Posted on March 17, 2023
| Sascha
New client application Version 3.29 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX). An update for the slightly outdated Google Playstore is also pending and should be live soon.
New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.243 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions:
VK_ARM_shader_core_properties VK_EXT_image_sliced_view_of_3d VK_EXT_pipeline_library_group_handles VK_QCOM_multiview_per_view_render_areas Other changes The new version also includes a usability improvement for filtering data.
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New surface data listings for the Vulkan database
Posted on March 4, 2023
| Sascha
New global surface data listings Being able to filter for all data available from submitted reports is an important aspect of the database, so I’m constantly adding new global listings that also let you check coverage numbers. The surface part of the database was missing two important listings: One for the surface transform modes and one for the surface composite alpha modes. They have been added to the database and quickly let you find out global and per-platform coverage numbers:
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Compute chapter for Vulkan-Tutorial
Posted on February 8, 2023
| Sascha
Vulkan Tutorial For a lot of developers wanting to learn Vulkan, the tutorial at www.vulkan-tutorial.com is the first learning resource they’ll encounter. It teaches most of the basics required to get started with Vulkan, but up until now only for the graphics part. But Vulkan does more than graphics, with compute shader support being mandatory and as such available on all devices and platforms that support Vulkan.
New compute chapter And being well aware on how important the tutorial is as a learning resource, we have a small group of people inside Khronos that takes care of keeping the tutorial up-to-date and in line with api changes.
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Reworked compare functionality for all GPU databases
Posted on November 26, 2022
| Sascha
Comparing devices - Current state A core feature of all my GPU databases (Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL and OpenGL ES) is the possibility to compare reports. This lets you quickly see how the implementations differ, e.g. regarding extension support or api limits.
For this you check the reports (or devices) to compare from the currently visible list:
And after pressing “compare” you’ll get a side-by-side comparison of the selected reports:
But the current implementation has an annoying limitation that has been bothering users (and me) for years now: You can only ever select reports (to compare) from the currently visible list of reports.
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Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.27 released
Posted on November 19, 2022
| Sascha
New client application
Version 3.27 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX).
New extensions
This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.230 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions:
- VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer (proposal)
- VK_ARM_shader_core_builtins
- VK_NV_copy_memory_indirect
- VK_NV_memory_decompression
- VK_NV_ray_tracing_invocation_reorder
Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer 3.26 released
Posted on September 30, 2022
| Sascha
New client application Version 3.26 of the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OSX).
New extensions This version has been updated to Vulkan Headers 1.3.230 adding support for reading new features and properties provided via VK_KHR_GET_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_PROPERTIES_2 for the following extensions:
VK_EXT_opacity_micromap VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state3 VK_EXT_device_fault VK_EXT_device_address_binding_report VK_EXT_pipeline_protected_access VK_EXT_legacy_dithering VK_EXT_mutable_descriptor_type VK_EXT_rasterization_order_attachment_access VK_NV_present_barrier VK_NV_optical_flow Changes and bugfixes Updated Vulkan profiles library to the latest version Added detection for Windows 11 (was showing up as Windows 10 in older versions) Fixed a bug with large values for maxTimelineSemaphoreValueDifference Database I also did some minor tweaks and bugfixes to the database:
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Vulkan Hardware Database gets global API level selection
Posted on April 29, 2022
| Sascha
Some background More than 6 years ago (time flies!) I released the Vulkan Hardware Database and Capability Viewer along with the first public release of Vulkan 1.0. Traffic on the database has been rising steadily and is approaching 1,000,000 hits per month. 2021 more than 3,000 reports have been uploaded to the database, a number that also has been steadily increasing since launch. This makes it my mostly used database (compared to OpenGL and OpenGL ES) and judging by the feedback it seems to be a widely and often used feature among Vulkan developers.
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