The Vulkan & SPIR-V Presentations From NVIDIA GTC 2015

[Luke_Wolf]

lol

PS4 already has a "low-level" API, which AMD claims was the trigger for Mantle.

Could Vulkan end up there? Sure. But the claim that it was a slam-dunk against DX12 because the PS4 is getting Vulkan is ridiculous. There has been no such announcement.

The same reasons LucasFilm and Pixar are backing Khronos could be applied to Sony as well. Sony is a gigantic company; it's not like all they make are PlayStations. They have a huge media / entertainment business, they are in the mobile device industry, and they have a VR headset, amongst a whole bunch of other tech crap.

They have no footprint in the mobile device industry and they recognize this which is why they're effectively killing the division. It'll still exist for the time being but its days are numbered. The only foot your argument might stand on is their entertainment/media business, but frankly all existing evidence points towards their involvement being related to the PS4. Whether this makes it a slam dunk against DX12 is meaningless as that is not the basis upon which a graphics API will become dominant, otherwise nobody would have written anything for the Playstation or Wii to begin with. That will be decided based on the merits of the APIs themselves and the drivers that implement them.

[smitty3268]

Are you really just that stupid?

...

If Sony isn't doing this for their gaming division pray tell what exactly are they doing it for? Their Vaio Division? Nope, they've got no interest in computer gaming. Their handset division? don't make me laugh. The only thing that makes any sense for Sony to do it for is their Gaming, which is to say their Playstation divsion

I guess I must have missed when all the ARM manufacturers made big gaming platforms, since clearly that must be the only reason they'd be interested in using Vulkan - to the point that they were the ones making most of the demos during it's presentation during GDC. It's not because they want something that'd be more efficient to replace OpenGL on their hardware that needs all the efficiency it can get. No, that would be crazy.

Meanwhile, the PS4 already has a perfectly good low-level API that people are using.

frankly all existing evidence points towards their involvement being related to the PS4

There's a grand total of ZERO evidence pointing that way, but go ahead and believe whatever you want.


To be honest, the real reason Sony is probably on that list at all is simply because they are a "Promoter Member" of Khronos. That probably gets their logo splashed all over anything and everything that Khronos does.

[Luke_Wolf]

I guess I must have missed when all the ARM manufacturers made big gaming platforms, since clearly that must be the only reason they'd be interested in using Vulkan - to the point that they were the ones making most of the demos during it's presentation during GDC. It's not because they want something that'd be more efficient to replace OpenGL on their hardware that needs all the efficiency it can get. No, that would be crazy.

Does Sony produce ARM chips? No. Is Sony a significant producer of mobile products? Not in the slightest, and again in case you hadn't heard Sony is cutting everything that isn't it's Media/Entertainment, PS4, or Camera division. With everything that's not one of those 3 up in the air for spinoffs, sales, or significant reductions. Having looked at it again.. Vaio is gone into it's own thing, and the Xperia line is probably next, with it well known that they're at a minimum going to cut it down significantly, and even the TV line is looked at being spun off.

Meanwhile, the PS4 already has a perfectly good low-level API that people are using.

There's a grand total of ZERO evidence pointing that way, but go ahead and believe whatever you want.

To be honest, the real reason Sony is probably on that list at all is simply because they are a "Promoter Member" of Khronos. That probably gets their logo splashed all over anything and everything that Khronos does.

So I'm supposed to believe that Sony was uninvolved in one of the most important development committees to the development of gaming for the future, and that their being on the Vulkan slide is because of being a "Promoter Member" of Khronos, frankly I don't buy that.

Additionally who is to say that Vulkan isn't a better API? Given that it's had the experience of the Sony design, the AMD's design, and likely some ideas from DX12's design due to a certain trio (Intel, AMD, and Nvidia) being involved in the committee. Who is to say that Sony can't decide that it likes Vulkan better even though they already have a low level API?

[Ancurio]

The Vulkan announcement spoke of support for consoles. I think we can all agree that Xbox is highly unlikely to support Vulkan. That leaves either PlayStation or Steam Machines if that latter even count as consoles rather than PCs.

Yes, someone asked them whether consoles will support Vulkan, and they said "well, they could, but it's not up to us and we don't know of anything specific".

Maybe in that a certain company by the name of Sony who just happens to also produce the PS4 had it's name stamped in large on the Vulkan Presentation, I don't know that might be a clue. Or maybe they just decided to be involved and stamp their name on there for shits and giggles. That totally makes sense.

*facepalm* Sony's logo was on the presentation because it was a presentation by the Khronos Group, which they're a part of. Yes, the same group Microsoft is a part of. It doesn't imply any involvement in specific projects done by the group.

[nanonyme]

I'd expect it inevitably comes down to whether Sony thinks they get an edge on Microsoft by supporting Vulkan. Or at least has something to combat Microsoft's attempts to build a unified game ecosystem between consoles and desktops. If they go with Vulkan, I doubt it will be because they like open API's

[tuke81]

Bullet Physics, LuxRender, Blender Cycles, COMSOL 5, GIMP + Gegl Trunk, etc.

Did they got blender cycles working with OpenCL? If I remember correctly it was kind of working but only with nvidia's opencl implementation, but there was no point for that because cuda was faster.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Render/Cycles/OpenCL

[tuke81]

Did they got blender cycles working with OpenCL? If I remember correctly it was kind of working but only with nvidia's opencl implementation, but there was no point for that because cuda was faster.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/De.../Cycles/OpenCL

Hmh no edit. Dug a round and it seems amd has done some job to split cycles kernel to make it more usable with their opencl implementation(and benefit others too):

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-cycles/2015-March/002280.html

Has anyone tried it?

[dragorth]

Hmh no edit. Dug a round and it seems amd has done some job to split cycles kernel to make it more usable with their opencl implementation(and benefit others too):

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-cycles/2015-March/002280.html

Has anyone tried it?

haven't tried it, it was just released a few days ago. Also, AMD kinda did this on their own, so I don't know if their code supports the new features slated for the next version of Cycles, such as PTex and OpenSubDiv. They did however document their approach, in a pretty detailed manner even, so their code may be fairly easy to port the new features to.

Hopefully we will read something about this soon.

Back to Vulkan, I wonder if anyone has thought about what it would take to port Blender over? They are just now talking about using OpenGL 3 as a baseline, so it could be interesting to see what difference it might make in that front.

[smitty3268]

So I'm supposed to believe that Sony was uninvolved in one of the most important development committees to the development of gaming for the future, and that their being on the Vulkan slide is because of being a "Promoter Member" of Khronos, frankly I don't buy that.

Oh, I'm sure they were "involved". The same way they are involved when a new version of OpenGL is approved. That doesn't mean that it will be added into PS4, though. If anything, it may be more of a "sure, that looks good to us, and maybe we'll stick it in PS5 in a few years" kind of thing.

I'm not saying it's not possible it will get added into the PS4. Just that there is no evidence at all that it will actually happen, and that you are reading an awful lot into what in essence is a little bit of marketing.

Even if Sony agrees that Vulkan is better than their current PS4 API, that doesn't mean they'd want to support it, in addition to the API's they already support on there. It would have to really add value for them to do that extra work.

[Dukenukemx]

What does Vulkan have to do with the PS4?

With PC gaming becoming more powerful, developers have to face the reality that using OpenGL or Vulkan over DX might be a better easier solution. Microsoft didn't make DX12 because they wanted to, but because of Mantle and Vulkan. Xbox One depends on developers on PC using DX to make it a no brainer to bring games over to Xbox, even though today it's Xbox games that come to PC.

PS4 doesn't have any association with OpenGL or DX at the moment, so it doesn't matter what API developers use on PC to make games. Why use DX when only Xbox and Windows will benefit from it? Where OpenGL or Vulkan will have Linux, Windows, and hopefully Mac OS X as well.