Khronos presenta Vulkan, antes GLNext|OpenGL-Next

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Y ya por fin despues de varios meses, el grupo Khronos presenta el nombre oficial de la API grafica de nueva generacion, que hereda codigo de Mantle para ser de bajo nivel. Asi es que aparece VULKAN la API de codigo abierto y multiplataforma de nueva generacion.


Ademas parece estar optimizado y planteado para ayudar en el uso del Computo Heterogeneo, junto con OpenCL 2.1 y el lenguaje intermediario SPIR-V, haciendo mas sencillo el desarrollo de la API para estas tareas HSA. Obviamente se pueden usar otros lenguajes en OpenCL [C++], pero ya esto de un lenguaje que ayuda a la comunicacion del software con el GPU via Vulkan le da cierta ventaja del lado del desarrollador.

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https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khro ... lic-review
https://www.khronos.org/spir


https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khro ... te-on-gpus

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About Vulkan
Vulkan is a unified specification that minimizes driver overhead and enables multi-threaded GPU command preparation for optimal graphics and compute performance on diverse mobile, desktop, console and embedded platforms. Vulkan also provides the direct GPU control demanded by sophisticated game engines, middleware and applications with the cross vendor performance and functional portability resulting from simpler, more predictable drivers. The layered design of Vulkan enables multiple IHVs to plug into a common, extensible architecture for code validation, debugging and profiling during development without impacting production performance; this layering flexibility is expected to catalyze strong innovation in cross-vendor GPU tools.

In another significant announcement today, Vulkan and OpenCL 2.1 are now sharing core intermediate language technologies resulting in SPIR-V; a revolution in the Khronos Standard Portable Intermediate Representation initially used by OpenCL™, now fully defined by Khronos with native support for shader and kernel features. SPIR-V splits the compiler chain, enabling high-level language front-ends to emit programs in a standardized intermediate form to be ingested by Vulkan or OpenCL drivers. Eliminating the need for a built-in high-level language source compiler significantly reduces GPU driver complexity and will enable a diversity of language front-ends. Additionally, a standardized IR provides a measure of shader IP protection, accelerated shader load times and enables developers to use a common language front-end, improving shader reliability and portability across multiple implementations.

“Vulkan is a significant Khronos initiative to provide developers the choice of a state-of-the-art GPU API that is open and portable across multiple platforms, at a time where platform diversity is increasing,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president at NVIDIA. “Khronos will be driving the Vulkan ecosystem with open source conformance test components and sample front-end compiler implementations that use SPIR-V to leverage the hardware community’s investment in optimized back-end drivers. Vulkan expands the family of Khronos 3D APIs, and complements OpenGL and OpenGL ES that between them, provide access to billions of GPUs today, and will continue to be evolved and maintained to meet industry needs.”


Industry Support for Vulkan
“With direct influence on several generations of hardware and software architectures for milliwatt to kilowatt platforms, OpenGL is undeniably the industry’s most successful 3D Graphics API,” said Raja Koduri, corporate vice president, Visual and Perceptual Computing, AMD. “Vulkan is a transformation to OpenGL that brings forth exciting low-overhead capabilities to enable compelling increases in performance and power efficiency while maintaining developer productivity.”

“Since helping found Khronos, ARM has strived to improve the efficiency of standards and deliver compelling graphics to mobile devices with minimum energy consumption,” said Jem Davies, vice president of technology, media processing group, ARM. “Vulkan is a big step forward in enabling our ecosystem of developers to unleash the capabilities of the latest ARM GPU technology.”

“Codeplay is excited that Vulkan's SPIR-V feature will enable new languages and tools to be used in graphics. By standardizing the way new languages can be added to graphics, a whole new tools ecosystem is being opened up,” said Andrew Richards, CEO of Codeplay.

“As one of the major manufacturers for digital automotive instrument clusters and infotainment systems, Continental fully supports Khronos' new Vulkan initiative,” Dr. Ulrich Kabatek, principal technical expert graphic systems & 3D visualization at Continental Automotive. “It will enable high-quality graphic systems with custom safety levels and increase connectivity for our sustainable, safe, comfortable, individual, and affordable solutions. Simply, it is a huge step forward towards the driving experience of tomorrow. We wish Vulkan all the best!”

“Imagination is proud to have been a major contributor to the new Vulkan standard. With this new API alongside OpenGL ES, we feel that Khronos now has the right set of APIs in place to address the extreme performance and mainstream ends of the graphics programming market,” said Peter McGuinness, director of technology marketing, Imagination Technologies.

“NVIDIA is a strong supporter of OpenGL and we are actively engaged in the development of Vulkan,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, senior director of Tegra graphics software at NVIDIA. “Vulkan’s focus on enabling portable, high-performance games and engines will drive cutting-edge content across the range of NVIDIA’s gaming platforms including PC, mobile and cloud.”

“The Vulkan API is a groundbreaking rethink of graphics software technology,” said Dan Baker, co-founder, Oxide Games. “The efficiency and threading abilities are profound leaps forward that enable Oxide Games to create entirely new game genres on a variety of platforms.”

“We are very excited about the introduction of the Vulkan™ API. Vulkan will allow us to maximize GPU performance for graphically demanding games enabled with future versions of our cross-platform portability technology,” said Gavriel State, CTO & Founder at TransGaming. “The Khronos Group plays a leading role in maintaining open standards across a unified technology ecosystem that TransGaming is proud to contribute towards as a dedicated member.”

“Efficient, close to metal, developer-friendly GPU APIs combining rendering with compute are a natural fit for Vivante’s highly efficient GPU architectures,” said Wei-Jin Dai, president and CEO of Vivante. “Vulkan unleashes the newest innovations inside Vivante's latest GPU hardware and will provide a boost to the pervasive Vivante GPU powered platforms currently in the market. Khronos has moved the industry forward with the release of Vulkan to drive platforms in the current and next generation of the GPU-enabled ecosystem.”
Llevaba semanas esperando que lo anunciaran ya.

Lo que me sorprende es que Apple un Promoter, la membresía más cara y muy limitada.
Alecs7k escribió:Llevaba semanas esperando que lo anunciaran ya.

Lo que me sorprende es que Apple un Promoter, la membresía más cara y muy limitada.

Eso tampoco significa mucho. Ya lo es de OpenGL y el soporte en MAC es una puta mierda.

Supongo que estarán por iOS.
josemurcia escribió:
Alecs7k escribió:Llevaba semanas esperando que lo anunciaran ya.

Lo que me sorprende es que Apple un Promoter, la membresía más cara y muy limitada.

Eso tampoco significa mucho. Ya lo es de OpenGL y el soporte en MAC es una puta mierda.

Supongo que estarán por iOS.


Pues justo hoy hablaba de esto con un compañero de curro y él cree que está en esto por los Macs, porque para iOS ya tienen Metal y se centrarán en optimizarlo solo para esos dispositivos.
Buenas noticias para Valve, no ?
Si, es el primer promotor de esta nueva version del API OpenGL [ahora Vulkan], que de hecho para su motor Source 2 sacaran una version con soporte nativo a Vulkan.

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https://www.insertcoin.com.mx/thread-Va ... e-gratuito
En una pagina de desarrolladores han abierto un tema ptreguntandio a su comunidad, ¿Que opinan de las nuevas APIs?, que incluye a Vulkan, y de este, parece que las herramientas de desarrollo y depuracion seran mejores que sus generaciones anteriores, y creo este es un buen punto para iniciar e incentivar a que se use esta API.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-wha ... try5215019

Seabolt escribió:What are your opinions on DX12/Vulkan/Mantle?

Posted 06 March 2015

I'm pretty torn on what to think about it. On one hand being able to write the implementations for a lot of the resource management and command processing allows for a lot of gains, and for a much better management of the rendering across a lot of hardware. Also all the threading support is going to be fantastic.

But on the other hand, accepting that burden will vastly increase the cost to maintain a platform and the amount of time to fully port. I understand that a lot of it can be ported piece by piece, but it seems like the amount of time necessary to even meet the performance of, say, dx12 is on the order of man weeks.

I feel like to fully support these APIs I need to almost abandon the previous APIs support in my engine since the veil is so much thinner, otherwise I'll just end up adding the same amount of abstraction that DX11 does already, kind of defeating the point.

What are your opinions?



phantom escribió:
Depending on how you have designed things the time to port should be pretty low and, importantly, the per-API level of code for the new Vulkan and DX12 paths will be very thin as they look very much the same in terms of API space and functionality.

Older APIs might be a problem, however again this depends on your abstraction levels; if you have coupled to D3D11 or OpenGL's style of doing things too closely at the front end then yes, it'll cause you pain - if your abstraction was light enough then you could possibly treat D3D11 and OpenGL as if they are D3D12 and Vulkan from the outside and do the fiddling internally.

.. new APIs look much cleaner and much simpler to learn - a few tricky concepts are wrapped in them but they aren't that hard to deal with and, with Vulkan at least, it looks like you'll have solid debugging tools and layers built in to help.

..


Otra parte interesantes es la de 'promit' quien dice ser un ex miembro del equipo de desarrollo de los controladores de nvidia, y habla de que muchos de los programadores de juegos hacen claras violaciones de las reglas de las APIs, usan poco o nada el ambiente multihilo, el cual en las APIs anteriores poco o nada hacian bien, aparte de que el uso de multi-GPUs en todos los casos era deplorable. ambien habla de que las nuevas APIs, lo cual incluye Vulkan resuelve todo o casi todo lo erroneo y problematico del multi-gpu, multi-hilo, etc., pero seguira estadno presente lo de descuidos y violaciones a las reglas de el API usado.

Otro punto a desctacar es que algunos dicen que 'parece' que Vulkan permitira un trabajo mas sencillo al ser mas claro, menos complejo [o al menos mejor explicado y mas entendible los comandos] en la implementacion, lo cual tambien a nosotros como usuarios finales nos interesa, ya que de este optimismo por Vulkan derivara en mas proyectos de software que lo use.
Vulkan tambien soportara Asyncronous Shaders.

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Y bueno, tambien ya hay Unreal Torunament 4 para Linux, supongo usara Vulkan, que seria la competencia directa a D3D_12 y seria la base del negocio de Valve/Steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Esn3-3Qc2w
Explicacion grafica de como funcionan los Shaders asincronicos

AMD Simplified: Asynchronous Shaders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3dUhep0rBs

Y un primer analisis de este sistema y su impacto en el rendimiento de los juegos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BYZ61Tfkw
En este hilo hablan un poco de las diferencias programando para Vulkan contra D3D12/DXGI12

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666986-dir ... ow-public/
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