Vulkan

Vulkan: Low-Overhead 3D Graphics and Computing API

A cross-platform API for high-efficiency access to modern GPUs, supporting PCs, consoles, mobile phones, and embedded platforms.

What is Vulkan?

Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and computing API that provides high-efficiency access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.

It was designed by the Khronos Group as the successor to OpenGL and OpenCL and has been implemented by major hardware vendors including Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Arm, Imagination and others. Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more control over the GPU to developers.

Some key advantages of Vulkan over older APIs like OpenGL include:

• Reduced driver overhead for draw calls allowing a high number of objects to be rendered while maintaining high frame rates.
• Support for multi-threaded command creation and submission for improved CPU utilization.
• Ability to get closer to “bare metal” graphics hardware giving the developer more control.
• Cross-platform availability allows a single Vulkan application to run across Windows, Linux, Android and other platforms.

Vulkan is very commonly used in game engines and 3D applications to leverage high performance GPU capabilities across platforms ranging from Steam Deck handheld PCs to Android mobile games and application development requiring 3D graphics and GPU compute.

Vulkan Features

Official Links