Not Everyone Likes The Possible "VULKAN" Name For Next-Gen OpenGL

Written by Michael Larabel in Vulkan on 1 March 2015 at 08:54 AM EST. 59 Comments
VULKAN
I'm still working on any sort of possible confirmation from the Khronos Group and other OpenGL stakeholders whether Vulkan is the name of the next-generation OpenGL API, but alas, on the weekend and being just a few days before the announcement, nothing has been confirmed.

Though in looking through the dozens of comments to the OpenGL Vulkan article from yesterday, not everyone is fond of the name. The Vulkan name is certainly different from the names of other Khronos projects besides OpenGL: OpenCL, OpenGL ES, WebGL, WebCL, COLLADA, gITF, EGL, OpenSL ES, OpenMAX, SPIR, SYCL, OpenVX, OpenVG, etc. Then again, Vulkan isn' too far off in names from the new graphics APIs like Apple's Metal and AMD's Mantle.


The various Vulkan top-level domains are also already taken by other users which would be a surprise if the Khronos Group were to use this as the official name for their next-gen API rather than just as a early marketing codename.

Whatever the next-gen API ends up being called, it's expected to be lower-level and compete directly with AMD Mantle and Microsoft Direct3D 12. I'd also expect it to unify OpenGL and OpenGL ES while integrating more compute functionality too. On Thursday is when we'll find out for sure during GDC 2015 in San Francisco with presentations by Khronos, Valve, NVIDIA, ARM, and other stakeholders that for the better part of the past year have started formulating this major overhaul to OpenGL. Demos will happen on 5 March and it wouldn't be surprising to see NVIDIA's binary Linux driver adapted as part of the mix.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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