Vulkan 1.3.213 Released With Minor Ray-Tracing Update, Other New Extensions

Vulkan 1.3.213 is out today that on top of the usual specification clarifications/corrections are also four new extensions, including VK_KHR_ray_tracing_maintenance1.

The new extensions of Vulkan 1.3.213 include:

VK_EXT_image_compression_control - This extension from Arm, Broadcom, and Imagination is for enabling fixed-rate image compression and support for controlling the kind of compression that can be applied. VK_EXT_image_compression_control adds a query for finding out the compression scheme and rate that can be applied to an image.

VK_EXT_pipeline_properties - As part of the Vulkan SC (Safety Critical) effort with pipelines always being compiled offline, this extension assists that JSON-represented compiled-offline pipelines with being able to query properties like the pipelineIdentifier.

VK_EXT_subpass_merge_feedback - This extension allows for providing feedback to a game/application whether the sub-passes specified on render pass creation are merged by the implementation. There is also a control to toggle sub-pass merging in the render pass for this extension drafted by Arm engineers.

VK_KHR_ray_tracing_maintenance1 - This extension adds a collection of minor ray-tracing features. Basically another maintenance extension with a slew of minor changes. Among the changes are supporting SPIR-V's SPV_KHR_ray_cull_mask within Vulkan, support for a new pipeline stage and access mask built on top of KHR_synchronization2, new acceleration structure queries, and an optional indirect ray-tracing dispatch command.

The Vulkan 1.3.213 changes are outlined via this commit.

NVIDIA for their part today released a new Vulkan driver beta already supporting the Vulkan ray-tracing KHR_ray_tracing_maintenance1 extension.