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Android calls in Vulkan support

by on11 August 2015


Live long and prosper

Android to get a graphics boost with a low-overhead rendering API named after a pointy eared star trek hero or a British bomber depending whether you are a trekky or a military buff.

Google is betting that a new Vulkan API for Android will provide more direct graphics control and direct rendering 3D graphics.

Vulkan was created by the Khronos Group which is a non-profit consortium of companies creating open standard APIs for computer graphics rendering such as OpenGL and WebGL.

When Google integrates the new Vulkan APIs, developers can choose to use them to replace OpenGL ES which is showing its age.

Google said that Vulkan will provide more app control to a device's GPU for better overall performance and efficiency.

"Vulkan is being designed from the ground up to minimize CPU overhead in the driver, and allow your application to control GPU operation more directly. Vulkan also enables better parallelization by allowing multiple threads to perform work such as command buffer construction at once."

The new APIs are designed with mobile graphics processors in mind instead of desktop-class GPUs.

Vulkan will be supported on most high-end phones and tablets from 2014 and up, powered by Nvidia's Tegra K1, Qualcomm's 400-series GPUs, ARM's 600, 700, and 800 line of Mali GPUs, and the PowerVR Series 6 from Imagination Technologies.

Google hasn't said when Vulkan support would arrive. It's unlikely to be ready in conjunction with the Android M launch later this year. At its Google I/O developer conference in May, Google made no mention of Vulkan and was probably hoping that no one would notice.

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