Vulkan Roadmap 2024 Brings Shader Quad Control, Shader Maximal Reconvergence & More

The Khronos Group today announced their Vulkan Roadmap 2024 milestone as a specification for their latest API features and meeting the needs of 2024 graphics processors and other hardware. Vulkan Roadmap 2024 builds upon Vulkan 1.3 and the Vulkan Roadmap 2022 specifications to deliver next-generation capabilities.

Vulkan Roadmap 2024 includes new extensions plus mandating some previously optional features and increasing minimum hardware capabilities.

Among the new features with Vulkan Roadmap 2024 are dynamic rendering local read via VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering_local_read to handle dynamic rendering on all GPUs, shader maximal reconvergence with VK_KHR_shader_maximal_reconvergence for enabling advanced parallel algorithms to be developed, shader quad control (VK_KHR_shader_quad_control) for performance and quality improvements, and other features. Vulkan Roadmap 2024 will also require GPU support for shader half-float and 8/16-bit integer types, push descriptors, and increases to the minimum sizes for descriptor sets and color attachments.

Other new extensions include VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_rotate, VK_KHR_shader_expect_assume, and VK_KHR_shader_float_controls2. There is also VK_KHR_index_type_uint8, VK_KHR_line_rasterization, and VK_KHR_load_store_op_none extensions promoted to Khronos (KHR) from former "EXT" extensions. The Vulkan 1.3.276 spec update is out today aligned with the Vulkan Roadmap 2024 unveiling.

Conformant products based on the Vulkan Roadmap 2024 specification are expected this calendar year... Should be interesting to see how quickly the Mesa Vulkan drivers land support for the new extensions. Meanwhile next month marks eight years already since the Vulkan 1.0 release. How time flies.

More details on the Vulkan Roadmap 2024 will be shared today on Khronos.org.