Low-overhead graphics APIs are all the rage these days, at least if you're the sort of person who gets excited about graphics APIs. iOS 8 introduced Metal last year, and OS X El Capitan will bring the API to the Mac when it's released this fall. The just-released Windows 10 includes DirectX 12, which will also come to Windows Phone when it gets updated later this year. And today Google announced that Android will be picking up support for Vulkan, the Khronos Group's low-overhead follow-up to OpenGL and OpenGL ES.
Along with updates on OpenGL, Khronos is also offering a status update on the development of Vulkan at this year’s SIGGRAPH show. Khronos's next-generation low-level API was announced last year, with further development taking off this year when it was announced at the API would be absorbing Mantle 1.0 and would operate under its current fiery name. The API is still in development, but Khronos has a few new pieces of information to share on the progress of development.
Gnome Horde runs under Android on a consumer device available now on the market; it uses the latest prototype Vulkan API driver for PowerVR GPUs (final performance may differ). On the left-hand side of the video, we are showing Vulkan and on the right we have OpenGL® ES 3.0. We have attempted to ensure both versions run equivalent code and both run without extensions. The demos are not using instancing either, each draw call could be a different piece of geometry with a different material or texture and the CPU performance would be very similar.
