Vulkan 1.3.296 Released With VK_EXT_device_generated_commands

Vulkan 1.3.296 is out as the first spec update in nearly one month. Given the time that has passed there are more bug fixes than usual but there is also a prominent new extension: VK_EXT_device_generated_commands.

VK_EXT_device_generated_commands is now out as a cross-vendor extension compared to NVIDIA's vendor-prefixed device generated commands extension that has been around. VK_EXT_device_generated_commands has been worked on by Valve's Linux graphics driver developers along with engineers from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Collabora, and others. Like with the NVIDIA extension, this new extension allows for the GPU device to generate a number of commands for command buffers.

See the extension spec page for more details on VK_EXT_device_generated_commands. This is a big one that's been months in the making. Valve's Mike Blumenkrantz describes this device generated commands extension as the biggest addition to the Vulkan API since ray-tracing and has written more about it in this blog post.

The other new extension is VK_EXT_depth_clamp_control that allows the application to control the viewport depth clamp range separately from the viewport. Using VK_EXT_depth_clamp_control allows for the application to restrict depth value ranges to an application-defined range.

More details on this morning's Vulkan 1.3.296 spec update via GitHub.