Soldato
It wasn't aimed particularly at you, more at the topic being discussed, you were just the last poster at the time.
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***The Official Vulkan API Thread***
- Thread starter shankly1985
- Start date
It wasn't aimed particularly at you, more at the topic being discussed, you were just the last poster at the time.
Caporegime
Another excellent article from Joel on Vulkan for anyone interested in the API. 
Caporegime
Another excellent article from Joel on Vulkan for anyone interested in the API.
Its all good stuff, i'm excited and so on.
The real question now is when?
Witcher 3 and new batman maybe.. They be on SteamOS so it's possible.
Caporegime
#Vulkan GDC session is now available to watch. I think you'll find it enlightening.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022018/
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022018/
Nice find give that a watch later.
Associate
As a developer I am very interested in both DX12 and Vulkan. Can't wait to get my hands on them and start seeing what they can do, I was waiting for the mantle API for what seems like a lifetime....
Soldato
I think I read that you can play with dx12 now, you need latest win 10 and gpu drivers from windows update, also the latest version of visual studio and the new windows 10 sdk.
Caporegime
Thanks Matt
Associate
Associate
Just fyi, the drivers installed via the update ( at least for me and my nvidia drivers ) would t work under dx 12 , refused to run under those drivers , I had to to install .90 laptop drivers unsigned.
Google Android to support API.
Developers of games and 3D graphics applications have one key challenge to meet: How complex a scene can they draw in a small fraction of a second? Much of the work in graphics development goes into organizing data so it can be efficiently consumed by the GPU for rendering. But even the most careful developers can hit unforeseen bottlenecks, in part because the drivers for some graphics processors may reorganize all of that data before it can actually be processed. The APIs used to control these drivers are also not designed for multi-threaded use, requiring synchronization with locks around calls that could be more efficiently done in parallel. All of this results in CPU overhead, which consumes time and power that you’d probably prefer to spend drawing your scene.
Lowering overhead and handing control to developers
In order to address some of the sources of CPU overhead and provide developers with more explicit control over rendering, we’ve been working to bring a new 3D rendering API, Vulkan™, to Android. Like OpenGL™ ES, Vulkan is an open standard for 3D graphics and rendering maintained by Khronos. Vulkan is being designed from the ground up to minimize CPU overhead in the driver, and allow your application to control GPU operation more directly. Vulkan also enables better parallelization by allowing multiple threads to perform work such as command buffer construction at once.
An API is only useful if it does what you expect
To make it easier to write an application once that works across a variety of devices, Android 5.0 Lollipop significantly expanded the Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) with over fifty thousand new tests for OpenGL ES, and many more have been added since. This provides an extensive open source test suite for identifying problems in drivers so that they can be fixed, creating a more robust and reliable experience for both developers and end users. For Vulkan, we’ll not only develop similar tests for use in the Android CTS, but we’ll also contribute them to Khronos for use in Vulkan’s own open source Conformance Test Suite. This will enable Khronos to test Vulkan drivers across platforms and hardware, and improve the 3D graphics ecosystem as a whole.
It’s all about developer choice
We’ll be working hard to help create, test, and ship Vulkan, but at the same time, we’re also going to contribute to and support OpenGL ES. As a developer, you’ll be able to choose which API is right for you: the simplicity of OpenGL ES, or the explicit control of Vulkan. We’re committed to providing an excellent developer experience, no matter which API you choose.
Vulkan is still under development, but you’ll be able to find specifications, tests, and tools once they are released at http://www.khronos.org/vulkan.
http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/low-overhead-rendering-with-vulkan.html?m=1
Developers of games and 3D graphics applications have one key challenge to meet: How complex a scene can they draw in a small fraction of a second? Much of the work in graphics development goes into organizing data so it can be efficiently consumed by the GPU for rendering. But even the most careful developers can hit unforeseen bottlenecks, in part because the drivers for some graphics processors may reorganize all of that data before it can actually be processed. The APIs used to control these drivers are also not designed for multi-threaded use, requiring synchronization with locks around calls that could be more efficiently done in parallel. All of this results in CPU overhead, which consumes time and power that you’d probably prefer to spend drawing your scene.
Lowering overhead and handing control to developers
In order to address some of the sources of CPU overhead and provide developers with more explicit control over rendering, we’ve been working to bring a new 3D rendering API, Vulkan™, to Android. Like OpenGL™ ES, Vulkan is an open standard for 3D graphics and rendering maintained by Khronos. Vulkan is being designed from the ground up to minimize CPU overhead in the driver, and allow your application to control GPU operation more directly. Vulkan also enables better parallelization by allowing multiple threads to perform work such as command buffer construction at once.
An API is only useful if it does what you expect
To make it easier to write an application once that works across a variety of devices, Android 5.0 Lollipop significantly expanded the Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) with over fifty thousand new tests for OpenGL ES, and many more have been added since. This provides an extensive open source test suite for identifying problems in drivers so that they can be fixed, creating a more robust and reliable experience for both developers and end users. For Vulkan, we’ll not only develop similar tests for use in the Android CTS, but we’ll also contribute them to Khronos for use in Vulkan’s own open source Conformance Test Suite. This will enable Khronos to test Vulkan drivers across platforms and hardware, and improve the 3D graphics ecosystem as a whole.
It’s all about developer choice
We’ll be working hard to help create, test, and ship Vulkan, but at the same time, we’re also going to contribute to and support OpenGL ES. As a developer, you’ll be able to choose which API is right for you: the simplicity of OpenGL ES, or the explicit control of Vulkan. We’re committed to providing an excellent developer experience, no matter which API you choose.
Vulkan is still under development, but you’ll be able to find specifications, tests, and tools once they are released at http://www.khronos.org/vulkan.
http://android-developers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/low-overhead-rendering-with-vulkan.html?m=1
That looks to be running very smooth.
Soldato
Still not sure Dota 2 was the best game to demo this API in, can MAX this at 1440p on a 7950 @ stock with a FX8350 @ 4.5GHz. In fact can max it and get well over 100fps last time I checked.
Caporegime
Game changing stuff that.
Soldato
Proof?
There's no doubt that it's an improvement though. My laptop with a 7730M GPU can only run Dota 2 @ 60fps (1080p) with minimum settings. But that's on the old engine too. So hard to know if Source 2 offers any benefits by itself.
It's not exactly The Witcher 3 when it comes to needing serious hardware is it?
They could've got 2 lots of fans excited if they'd released a demo of HL3 running on Vulkan.
Of all the Source games they could've picked, Dota 2 seems the least impressive one to demo. Why not Left 4 Dead 2 or something?
The other thing is that I believe they actually changed the game to have more creeps than normal too. That's how little this game needed it, demoing it as it normally runs probably didn't show enough difference.
The mobile GPUs would probably run out of grunt on a graphically more demanding game before the PCu benefits really kicked in.
That is the ironic thing with the performance differences with mantle , the biggest benefit comes form having a slow CPU (but preferable lots of cores0 and a very high end GPU. If the system is more in balance then the benefits in raw performance are much reduced.
Of course there are other benefits to having a reduced CPU overhead and mutli-threased API, but the benefits aren't as obvious to show as an FPS counter on a screen shot. E.g., we will be able to render more unique object sat once before hitting a draw call limit, that limit is not obviously seen in current DX11 gamers because the engine is design with that limit in mind.
Yea well its running on intels IGPU which lets be honest isn't very powerful compared to a dedicated gpu. Then look how many creeps were on screen. Not bad for a intel chip that! Try running dota now on your igpu it would die maxed out. And that vid looked like 1080p maxed.