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PayPalThe specification for the long awaited Vulkan graphics API has now been released by Khronos. An SDK by LunarG has also been released which contains validation and debugging tools for Vulkan applications.
Quite a lot of people have been waiting excitedly for the Vulkan spec to come out and there has been a lot of hype surrounding the new API. Vulkan has been designed to be a high-performance low-level API which can take advantage of modern multicore processors far better than OpenGL. We will have to see how much this new approach affects real life performance once we have drivers with Vulkan support and games that utilize this new API, hopefully we'll get that soon.
AMD have also released a video explaining how Vulkan works in a nutshell.
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Direct Link
Direct Link
You can read the full Vulkan specification announcement from Khronos here and find some docs and samples of Vulkan in the Khronos GitHub. Correction: The Vulkan samples page is currently empty. The LunarG Vulkan SDK will be available on their Vulkan page but currently the download page might show you a 404 error.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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leillo1975 16 Feb 2016
OMFG!!!!! Today is the day!
1 Likes, Who?
Nice! Now ... where are the drivers ?? :)Nvidia has some but they are of no use basically as there are no Linux games using Vulkan. The Talos Principle version with the Vulkan driver should hopefully arrive soon. Anyway, here's the Nvidia page for the Vulkan drivers and stuff: http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/02/16/vulkan-graphics-api/
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I've become curious about one thing: if Vulkan provides such a low level access to hardware, what will happen if an app (a game usually) starts to misbehave? I read Vulkan has very little validation in favor of speed. Does that mean that a buggy game could crash the entire Xorg or freeze the driver? A user-space segfault usually leads to crashing the program but not the entire system (and Xorg/desktop for many people is the system), but if invalid data goes into the kernel space or the Xorg driver and crashes there because of that... I suppose it would be bad. Kernel panic for the module and Xorg crash in case of the Xorg driver.
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Ouch. Cruel, before the LAN party weekend :-(...
Oh btw... was it today that nvidia actually made their beta drivers public or did I just miss that one completely?
https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver
NVidia put up two vulkan samples (including code) as well...
https://github.com/nvpro-samples
Last edited by STiAT on 16 Feb 2016 at 3:20 pm UTC
Oh btw... was it today that nvidia actually made their beta drivers public or did I just miss that one completely?
https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver
NVidia put up two vulkan samples (including code) as well...
https://github.com/nvpro-samples
Last edited by STiAT on 16 Feb 2016 at 3:20 pm UTC
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Faulty game will hang GPU (so the WHOLE system) and it is up to the driver to RESET GPU -- so it will depend on how well are the drivers written.
This might be good link for the article:
https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/
There are all the drivers avail: NVIDIA, AMD and Intel :)
This might be good link for the article:
https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/
There are all the drivers avail: NVIDIA, AMD and Intel :)
1 Likes, Who?
Avehicle7887 16 Feb 2016
Vulkan powered Witcher 3 for Linux in 3...2..1.....
Maybe one day.
Maybe one day.
4 Likes, Who?
Nice! Now ... where are the drivers ?? :)
Check out Vulkan launching page. It's all there.
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rustybroomhandle 16 Feb 2016
Hah, the "Multiple operating systems" slide in the video shows several specific Linux distros, plus a generic tux icon. :)
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Btw, quite nice support with the Vulkan drivers:
AMD(blob) up from HD7700
NVIDIA(blob) up from 630GT
I stand corrected -- there is only Windows driver for AMD ...
Last edited by nocri on 16 Feb 2016 at 2:57 pm UTC
AMD(blob) up from HD7700
NVIDIA(blob) up from 630GT
I stand corrected -- there is only Windows driver for AMD ...
Last edited by nocri on 16 Feb 2016 at 2:57 pm UTC
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The AMD driver is only available for Windows.
Considering AMD is rebuilding their Linux driver infrastructure, I really don't expect them to have drivers just yet. As long as they give good deadline and distributions have given time to include them, it is not a big deal.
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Vulkan Version of The Talos Principle is out too:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/
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I remember someone anticipating for giggles that NVIDIA will beat AMD in Vulkan which was born out of their own spec (Mantle). Props to you sir but I don't know whether to laugh or weep.
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I remember someone anticipating for giggles that NVIDIA will beat AMD in Vulkan which was born out of their own spec (Mantle). Props to you sir but I don't know whether to laugh or weep.
Didn't know it was a race.
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Vulkan Version of The Talos Principle is out too:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/412447331651559970/
Okay, I didn't expect them to push it that early... wow.
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The Vulkan renderer for Talos Principle isn't on Linux yet. Hopefully that will arrive soon.
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I remember someone anticipating for giggles that NVIDIA will beat AMD in Vulkan which was born out of their own spec (Mantle). Props to you sir but I don't know whether to laugh or weep.
Didn't know it was a race.
Oh but it was. Why do you think they waited for the first full implementation (Talos) to release the whole thing.
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