The Short Version About The Big Vulkan Reveal

Written by Michael Larabel in Vulkan on 16 February 2016 at 09:00 AM EST. 1 Comment
VULKAN
If you didn't already do so, be sure to read my big Vulkan Linux write-up that covers details on drivers, demos / games / benchmarks, the Vulkan common loader, and much more. I've been working on that article for a number of days along with busy testing early Vulkan code and drivers. But if you're short on time, here is the quick summary.

- The NVIDIA Linux Vulkan driver is ready to go today in beta form. This is pretty much where you can experience the best driver support today across all supported platforms.

- Intel should have a Linux driver ready, but stay tuned for more details.

- It's looking like AMD may not have out their Vulkan Linux driver for some time.

- Vulkan offers up a lot of possibilities and should be super-exciting for developers. All developers I spoke with have been really happy with how Vulkan 1.0 turned out. Vulkan 1.0 is fantastic and the long-awaited Khronos graphics API redesign.

- For end-users, today isn't too exciting if you were hoping that all of a sudden your Linux gaming system would be much faster, there would be all the drivers you wanted, and the Linux desktop would suddenly rule the world. It will likely be some time before Vulkan is really performing much better than OpenGL. At the moment, the Vulkan Linux launch title game isn't public for Linux but the developers should be pushing it out shortly.


Learn a lot more via reading the full article. Thanks to everyone who helped with gaining access to pre-release Vulkan drivers, the Vulkan headers, open and closed Linux demos, and all of the information. It's been a busy past few days on top of all the other Phoronix work. I'm super excited about the future of Vulkan.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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