Vulkan 1.4 3D graphics and compute API released

The Khronos Group has just announced the release of Vulkan 1.4 cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API. The new release makes some of the optional extensions and features mandatory, adds streaming transfers, and supports 8K rendering on up to eight targets. Minimum hardware limits have also been increased including at least seven maxBoundDescriptorSets and eight maxColorAttachments.

Vulkan 1.4 highlights:

• Streaming Transfers: new implementation requirements to ensure applications can stream large quantities of data to a device while simultaneously rendering at full performance.
• Previously optional extensions and features critical to emerging high-performance applications are now mandatory in Vulkan 1.4, ensuring availability across multiple platforms. These include push descriptors, dynamic rendering local reads, and scalar block layouts.
• Maintenance extensions up to and including VK_KHR_maintenance6 are now part of the core Vulkan 1.4 specification.
• 8K rendering with up to eight separate render targets is now guaranteed to be supported, along with several other limit increases.

You’ll find the updated specification with Vulkan 1.4 additions on the Khronos website. But it’s not just an announcement about a new API as AMD, Arm, Imagination, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Samsung have developed GPU drivers that have passed Vulkan 1.4 Conformance, and the Mesa open-source Linux drivers have passed Vulkan 1.4 conformance on AMD, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm hardware. You’ll find those on the conformant products page with a long list of Vulkan 1.4 conformant products that include:

• AMD – Undisclosed product with Ubuntu 64-bit and Windows 10 64-bit drivers
• NVIDIA – Various GeForce/Quadro/RTX graphics cards with Windows 10/11 drivers
• Samsung – Undisclosed product with Android 15.0 drivers on an Armv9 CPU
• Imagination Technologies – Various PowerVR D-Series DXT, PowerVR B-Series BXE/BXM/BXS/BXT, and PowerVR A-Series GPUs with Ubuntu 22.04 + Linux 5.15 drivers
• Qualcomm – SM8750 (Snapdragon 8 Elite) with drivers for Android 15
• Intel – Meteor Lake processors with Intel Arc GPU, Alder Lake processors with Intel UHD graphics, Ice Lake SoCs, etc… Note Linux drivers only
• Arm – Mali-G610 GPU with Linux driver
• Software Freedom Conservancy – Mesa drivers supporting several AMD, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm platforms including the NVK driver developed by Collabora for high-end NVIDIA graphics cards

Developers can download the latest Vulkan SDK from the LunarG website and a few more details may be found in the announcement.

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