What is Vulkan?

Vulkan is a new generation graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms. (source Khronos @2021)

(source https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/ @2021)

Vulkan was previously named as "glNext" (short for "Next Generation OpenGL Initiative") set to become something like OpenGL5. However, it's much lower-level compared to OpenGL, working closely with GPU. For instance, as verses OpenGL, Vulkan API supports asynchronous generation of command buffers across multiple threads and sequenced processing of those buffers to a command pipeline. As such, thread and memory management tasks are much easier at the application level, not at the driver level, allowing developers to have more control power.
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Now although it was originally intended for gaming industry with a heavy usage on GPU, the need for GPU expands across industries, an automotive sector as an example. Blackberry's QNX, one of the most preferred ROTS in the digital cluster development of automotive, has now announced it support of Vulkan API (source phoronix @2021).
A thread for a needle, Vulkan 1.2 is also fully supported by NVidia (source NVidia @2021).
Sooner than you think, Vulkan is already here in use.

What can we do?

tQCS's partner, KDAB, has been developing with and for Vulkan for several years and is an early adoptor as part of its membership in the Khronos Group. Whilte Vulkan can create performance improvements on desktop and embedded platforms and enable better energy efficiency, tQCS-KDAB is looking for various ways to improve performance of its 3D animation solutions, Kuesa for 3D Studio, which yet uses another standards from Khronos, glTF2, a specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by engines and applications. 

In efforts to support the research and development efforts of our customers, tQCS-KDAB will provide a flexible workshop and/or professional consultancy service to evaluate technical applicability and to produce a Proof-of-Concept, including​

• establish and document key use cases and technical requirements, target platforms, integration targets, etc
• draft proof of concept scope and technical deliverables on selected platforms
• establish performance and quality metrics
• implement proof of concept
• benchmark and profile, document performance characteristics and scalability behavior
• document challenges, risk and constraints emerging from the implementation
• analyze impact on non-PoC use cases and strategic opportunities and challenges

A typical duration on this type of research projects are between a couple of weeks up to 3 months.
Read more on what we can offer for your smooth transition to Vulkan.

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What We Can Do