Khronos has provided the news of Vulkan 1.3, its set of open-source libraries that serve as an alternative to the great Microsoft DirectX. These libraries allow the correct operation of 3D applications, which are commonly used in video games. the group too has offered details on the roadmap that will follow during this 2022.
vulkan it is updated two years after the arrival of 1.2. Its developers have made great advances in their tool, which narrows the gap to DirectX and has long been considered a great free alternative to Microsoft’s set of libraries.
Vulkan 1.3 arrives to reduce market fragmentation
Through an entry on the official Khronos blog, all the news that Vulkan 1.3 brings with it have been detailed. From the group they assure that all the features that are incorporated in this new version are no longer optional, so that greater compatibility and standardization will be offered in systems that make use of these libraries.
Among the most outstanding novelties we find dynamic rendering, several optimizations in memory use, improvements in synchronization, and much more. The idea of this update is to reduce complexity for developers to optimize their applications with these libraries.
In addition, Vulkan 1.3 also comes with compilation improvements via a number of extensions and utilities from the ‘VK_EXT’ package. Are will help developers control and gain insight into build pipelines. Khronos makes all the features supported by this new specification available to everyone through this link on their page.
The API is compatible with a large number of devices, as it has been developed with OpenGL ES 3.1 in mind. This means that Vulkan 1.3 will work on smartphones, tablets, consoles, computers, and a wide range of systems. Companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, or ARM, among others, have already expressed their confidence in this set of tools.
A roadmap to support multiple devices
As for the creation of a roadmap, it will help developers working on their games to have a better idea of the support that this API offers for the features they want to implement. Khronos will periodically publish its development goals for Vulkan, offering clarity over its standard for mid- and high-end GPUs across multiple devices.
The Vulkan roadmap for 2022 it is designed so that all changes are widely supported by manufacturers in a short space of time, since according to Khronos, it only includes hardware functionalities that the companies had already planned to implement. This roadmap will focus on the markets that require the most Vulkan tools, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, consoles, and desktops.