Vulkan 1.0.57 Released With A Few New Extensions

While there is no big Vulkan update this week for SIGGRAPH17, The Khronos Group has gone ahead and issued Vulkan 1.0.57. Besides fixes, there are some new extensions.

Vulkan 1.0.57 has a few documentation fixes/clarifications, but nothing really noteworthy. What gets our new attention are the four new extensions.

New to Vulkan 1.0.57 are VK_AMD_mixed_attachment_samples, VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage, VK_KHR_relaxed_block_layout, and VK_NV_depth_range_unrestricted.

VK_AMD_mixed_attachment_samples: This AMD-developed extension allows multi-sampled rendering with a depth/stencil sample count greater than the color sample count.

VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage: This adds the SPIR-V post-depth-coverage support (SPV_KHR_post_depth_coverage) to Vulkan.

VK_KHR_relaxed_block_layout: This allows drivers to specify whether they support more variation in block code offset decorations.

VK_NV_depth_range_unrestricted: This NVIDIA-developed extension documentation still appears to be missing from the v1.0.57 upload.

The extensions aren't too exciting, but great to see Vulkan continuing to release often and moving forward. The latest Vulkan specification is available from the registry.