Valve Software has been backing work on Fossilize as an open-source project providing a serialization format for persistent Vulkan object types.

Valve has been backing Hans-Kristian Arntzen to work on this Vulkan project while it has also seen commits by their in-house Vulkan guru Dan Ginsburg. The Fossilize library and Vulkan layer is intended so these persistent Vulkan persistent object types can be backed by the pipeline cache, a Vulkan layer to capture the cache, and the ability to replay the cache on different devices without having to run the application itself.

Fossilize supports both Linux and Windows and besides the VK_LAYER_fossilize is also a number of CLI utilities for replaying, converting, and optimizing these captures. Fossilize appears to play into Valve's goal of distributing pre-generated, optimized caches for their Vulkan games on Steam to help enhance the first-run experience of new games but can have other use-cases as well.

Those wishing to learn more about Fossilize can do so via their GitHub page.