Vulkan

Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was originally developed as Mantle by AMD, but was later given to Khronos Group. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. Overview Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D-graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media, and highly parallelized computing. Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more efficient CPU and GPU usage compared to the older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs. It does so by providing a considerably lower-level API for the application than the older APIs that more closely resembles how modern GPUs work. Vulkan is comparable to Apple's Metal API and Microsoft's Direct3D 12, and is harder to use than the higher-level OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores. Vulkan was first announced by the non-profit Khronos Group at GDC 2015. The Vulkan API was initially referred to as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", or "OpenGL next" by Khronos, but use of those names was discontinued when "Vulkan" was announced.