Vulkan 1.4 released: developer-requested features integrated into the core

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Vulkan 1.4 focuses on developer feedback

At SIGGRAPH Asia, Khronos Group, the organization behind the open standard known as Vulkan announced the new specifications for this graphics API. 



According to the official blog post, the Vulkan 1.4 update is a developer-driven update, focusing on features requested by members to increase the value of this popular graphics API among developers. This API powers many popular games, including Doom Eternal, and since it is an open standard, it works across different operating systems and architectures with much less development effort compared to DirectX-based games.

The 1.4 specifications are not something one would call a major update; rather, it is a consolidation of various optional extensions and features. This update also increases hardware limits. Khorons announced Vulkan 1.4 is primarily focusing on streamlining development and deployment of the GPU-accelerated apps.
 

Vulkan 1.4 changes

• Streaming Transfers: Vulkan 1.4 imposes new implementation requirements to ensure portable, cross-platform applications can stream large quantities of data to a device while simultaneously rendering at full performance.
  
• Previously optional extensions and features critical to emerging high-performance applications are now mandatory in Vulkan 1.4, ensuring their reliable availability across multiple platforms. These include push descriptors, dynamic rendering local reads, and scalar block layouts.
  
• Maintenance extensions up to and including VK_KHR_maintenance6 are now part of the core Vulkan 1.4 specification.
  
• 8K rendering with up to eight separate render targets is now guaranteed to be supported, along with several other limit increases.
  

According to Khronos, all major players in the GPU market, who are also members of the group, have already completed driver development for Vulkan 1.4. These companies include AMD, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.

Users can check all official documentation by following this link. Vulkan is an always-evolving standard, and developers passionate about graphics can even join the official Discord to share their feedback and ideas.

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