Google Is Working On Vulkan Over CPUs With SwiftShader

[c0d1f1ed]

the last commit to the vulkan-prototype branch is 8 months or so ago, not sure how agressively they are pursuing this at least in public.

Hi, I'm the tech lead of SwiftShader and author of those slides being discussed here. The prototype branch was just to get our feet wet and get a sense of how hard it would be to get the first triangle on the screen. After that we actually first focused on passing all OpenGL ES 3.0 tests. Now that has been achieved, and we're integrating it into Chrome for WebGL 2 and Android for the emulator. Once done with that, Vulkan will likely become a priority.

[geearf]

Looks like they're not forcing enough.

As long as they get money from phones advertised with Android , they're really raking their time.

Aren't all phones out with Oreo forced to have Trebble?

[c0d1f1ed]

Is it just me or is their vision for web really fragmented?

From the web developer's perspective we're hoping to keep it quite simple. We have WebGL 1 & 2 today, which are essentially just OpenGL ES 2 & 3 for JavaScript. It needed the ANGLE project to work well on Windows, and SwiftShader as a fallback. We're working on a new API, likely to be named WebGPU, which will take advantage of the capabilities of the new generation of native APIs and have lower overhead than WebGL. Google's proposal is to abstract the three major native APIs into a single web-friendly API, that will also integrate easily with WebAssembly.

Note that this isn't very different from Android, where you have the choice between the legacy OpenGL ES APIs, and Vulkan. For the web we simply need a more secure API that is also well supported on other OSes.

[Jumbotron]

Hi, I'm the tech lead of SwiftShader and author of those slides being discussed here. The prototype branch was just to get our feet wet and get a sense of how hard it would be to get the first triangle on the screen. After that we actually first focused on passing all OpenGL ES 3.0 tests. Now that has been achieved, and we're integrating it into Chrome for WebGL 2 and Android for the emulator. Once done with that, Vulkan will likely become a priority.

Thanks for that info! And thanks for your hard work!

[starshipeleven]

Aren't all phones out with Oreo forced to have Trebble?

Devices that are shipped with Oreo as their first firmware MUST support Treble.

Devices that are updated to Oreo are NOT forced to support Treble as it would require significant changes, like an additional partition to store the lower-level components of the firmware (kernel and drivers I guess) so they can be decoupled from the Android firmware.

Leopard is probably looking at the low amount of manufacturers that chose to add Treble in their OTA firmware updates, which is "totally unexpected", given what PITA is to do such an upgrade on existing systems.

[pal666]

leaving existing devices non-updated is a big boost to new devices.

from better vendors

[pal666]

That is the reason why Treble didn't take off and never will.

https://www.xda-developers.com/list-android-devices-project-treble-support/

[pal666]

only companies like Nokia ( which tries to get into market again )

that nokia is a brand sold to chinese, not a company. well, you could consider it a company, but that company does it for first time, not again