Vulkan SDK Now Formally Available For Apple Platforms - Including Apple Silicon Support

The Khronos Group and LunarG have announced an updated Vulkan SDK that includes now formally providing support for Apple platforms, including Apple Silicon systems via Universal Binaries.

With Apple still not officially backing Vulkan but preferring their own closed ecosystem of the Metal API, Vulkan on macOS/iOS platforms continue to rely on the MoltenVK portability layer that ultimately routes Vulkan over the Metal drivers.

With the Vulkan SDK now being formally available for Apple platforms, the hope is to ease Vulkan-on-macOS development by games / engine developers and other application developers.

MoltenVK was recently updated with more Vulkan extensions, support for Metal 3.0, Apple Silicon, Mac Catalyst, and tvOS support.

For those interested in the latest work around MoltenVK and the Vulkan SDK on Macs, see the Khronos.org blog for more details.