On June 21, 2024 the Vulkan SC working group at the Khronos Group released the Vulkan SC 1.0.15 specification, the latest maintenance update to the “Vulkan Safety Critical” open standard API, which enables GPU-accelerated graphics and computation to be deployed in systems that are certified to meet industry functional safety standards.

This blog post is on the latest Vulkan SC developments, including significant new functionality in the Vulkan SC validation layers and broadened availability of NVIDIA Vulkan SC drivers.

In this Collabora blog post, Eric Smith details how the Panthor kernel driver and Mesa Panfrost driver combination are now officially conformant for OpenGL ES 3.1 on Mali-G610 (a chip in the 10th generation of Mali, aka “v10” or “Valhall”). This required passing tens of thousands of conformance test cases. Passing these tests gives hardware implementers and software adopters assurance that the driver is basically sound. This doesn’t mean that Panthor and Panfrost are bug-free, of course. Software being software, there are always bugs! It does mean that it’s unlikely that there are major issues remaining. Users can be confident that programs using OpenGL ES 3.1 will “just work” on the tested version of Mesa (24.1.1).

The Broadcom V3DV driver living within the Mesa code-base that provides Vulkan API support most notably for Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 single board computers now advertises Vulkan 1.3 and has been successfully tested on both the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 boards.

The open-source Intel “ANV” Vulkan driver within Mesa is now more capable for its Vulkan Video support with the H.264 and H.265 encode support now wired up for Mesa 24.3.

The recently completed MPEG-I Scene Description ISO/IEC 23090 standard builds on glTF 2.0 using the MPEG vendor extension framework. The need for a flexible and dynamic scene description solution for immersive experiences had been identified early in the process of specifying technologies for immersive media in MPEG. In looking for a solution to this gap, MPEG reviewed existing technologies to identify formats with a history of being successfully deployed and widely used. The group then evaluated whether one of these formats would satisfy the identified requirements, or whether a new format needs to be defined from scratch. glTF stood out as an exemplary option.

In a glTF meet-up presentation, Khronos members shared the use cases and requirements that lead to choosing glTF, and detailed the architecture of the extensions. This blog summarizes that presentation, explaining the journey to incorporating glTF 2.0 into MPEG-I scene description and how content creators and developers can begin using this new standard to develop interactive real-time applications.

In a collaborative effort between Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) members Pixar, Autodesk, and Adobe, we are excited to announce experimental support for the Vulkan API through the HgiVulkan backend, available in OpenUSD 24.08. OpenUSD is a high-performance, extensible software platform for collaboratively creating, editing, and simulating complex 3D scenes.This allows developers to start leveraging Vulkan in Storm or other Hgi-based renderers.

ANARI is the industry’s open standard, cross-platform 3D rendering engine API developed by the Khronos Group to provide portable access to sophisticated 3D functionality including ray tracing and global illumination. ANARI is already widely used by scientific visualization applications and is implemented over multiple rendering engines, including AMD’s RadeonProRender, Intel’s OSPRay, and NVIDIA’s VisRTX, among others. ANARI is developed with full public access to the specification and has recently incorporated significant community feedback, including improvements to the object interface, better error handling through guaranteed API stream robustness, revamped runtime feature queries, directly mapped array parameters, improved volume shading, and compatibility with the Khronos glTF Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) materials.

Ultra Engine 0.9.6 introduces a new foliage system using GLSL compute shaders for efficient rendering of dense forests. The engine makes extensive use of Khronos’ glTF file format and PBR rendering reference code. Ultra Engine leverages Khronos technologies to provide up to 10x faster framerates for games and VR applications. Find out about other features included in the latest Ultra Engine release.

In this Rastergrid article, they write about the secret sauce behind the Vulkan SC Ecosystem components that enabled them to leverage the industry-proven Vulkan Ecosystem components to provide corresponding developer tooling for the safety-critical variant of the Vulkan API.

After Effects 24.5 continues Adobe’s ongoing overhaul of the software’s 3D toolset. Changes include the option to import 3D models with embedded animations, originally rolled out in beta in April, and now available in the stable release. Animation support is currently restricted to files in glTF/GLB format.

The Khronos 3D Formats Working Group is pleased to announce that the glTF 2.0 Interactivity Extension (KHR_interactivity) specification draft is available for public review and feedback before ratification. This new extension uses behavior graphs, enabling content creators to add logic and behaviors to glTF assets, with a focus on safety, portability and ease of implementation.

The draft specification is now available on the Khronos GitHub page, and the Khronos 3D Formats Working Group is seeking input from all members of the glTF community, including content creators, application developers, and digital content creation tool implementers.

In a world where AI, HPC and Safety-Critical acceleration is shifting toward heterogeneous architectures that integrate processors with different architectures from multiple vendors, the need for seamless interoperability and shared open standards has never been more critical. That’s why the UXL Foundation (Unified Acceleration) and the Khronos Group have entered into a liaison agreement to help accelerate the evolution of open accelerated heterogeneous programming.

The new “Honeykrisp” driver is the first conformant Vulkan for Apple hardware on any operating system, implementing the full Vulkan 1.3 Specification without “portability” waivers.

Honeykrisp is not yet released for end users. They’re continuing to add features, improve performance, and port to more hardware. However, source code is available for developers.

The PlayCanvas Editor now has fully integrated support for splats! Learn how to quickly build stunning, interactive 3DGS applications today.

The Khronos Group has released the Khronos PBR Neutral Tone Mapper specification and sample implementation. Khronos PBR Neutral is specifically designed to display 3D assets rendered using physically-based rendering (PBR) with true-to-life colors that are vital in applications such as eCommerce, architecture and CAD. The Khronos PBR Neutral Tone Mapper is already enjoying wide adoption and support by 3D tools and engines including <model-viewer>, Autodesk, Babylon.js, Blender, Dassault, Filament, London Dynamics, Phasmatic, Three.js, and Threekit.

LunarG has released a new SDK for Windows, Linux, & macOS that supports Vulkan API revision 1.3.283. This new release has improved validation coverage, an improved Vulkan Configurator and a host of Windows and macOS changes that can be viewed in the release notes.

The OpenXR Working Group wishes to expand and demonstrate the reach of the API Standard by better integrating OpenXR with the Godot game engine to effectively bridge the gap between runtime developers and application developers.

The XR_EXT_local_floor extension recently made its way into the core specification with the release of OpenXR 1.1. This blog post, delves into the technical aspects of the LOCAL_FLOOR[1] reference space. While STAGE space is still available to developers for defining playspace bounds, we will show how LOCAL_FLOOR offers a convenient alternative for obtaining a recenterable floor space that does not require user calibration. Additionally, we explore how this extension includes an estimated floor height, adding further convenience to XR development workflows.

The Khronos Group announces the immediate availability of the OpenXR 1.1 specification. This release evolves the widely adopted OpenXR open API standard for high-performance, cross-platform access to VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR) — collectively known as XR—platforms and devices. OpenXR 1.1 consolidates widely used API extensions into the core specification to reduce fragmentation and adds new functionality to streamline the development of more powerful and efficient XR applications. Along with five extensions being incorporated in the core specification, feature enhancements include interaction profile enhancements, universal fundamental tools for building enhanced XR experiences, new error codes, and specification refinement.

Intel’s OpenCL Intercept Layer 3.0.4 is now available to assist in OpenCL debugging and performance profiling across Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and FreeBSD. The release has overhead reduction work to yield better performance during tracing and profiling, many general improvements to tracing and logging, kernel capture and replay support, more support for Chrome tracing, and a variety of other new abilities. Those developing with OpenCL and wishing to check out Intel’s intercept layer for debugging and performance profiling can find the Intel’s OpenCL Intercept Layer available on GitHub.

Magic Leap is fully embracing OpenXR, the industry standard API, for Magic Leap 2 development. This includes support for the standard Unity OpenXR Plugin. This change should make it easier for developers building AR apps across multiple headsets.

The results of LunarG’s 2024 Vulkan Ecosystem & SDK Survey have been released! LunarG has summarized the results and created a report that shares the key findings and suggested actions. The information you provided will be used to help guide Vulkan Ecosystem investments in 2024 and beyond. The results have also been shared with key partners and contributors in the hope that they will also use the information to guide their investments.

Thanks to those of you who completed the annual survey!

The OpenCL Working Group has released v3.0.16 of the OpenCL specifications, the sixteenth OpenCL 3.0 maintenance update. This is a significant update that integrates the standard Khronos KHR extension specifications into the core specification, making it easier for users and implementers to understand how extensions interact with core OpenCL functionality.

In addition, this update added the provisional cl_khr_kernel_clock extension, which adds new built-in functions to profile a kernel executing on an OpenCL device. It also includes final versions of the cl_khr_semaphore, cl_khr_external_semaphore, and cl_khr_external memory extensions, enabling efficient interoperability with other APIs.

The latest specifications can be found on the Khronos OpenCL registry: https://registry.khronos.org/OpenCL/

Vulkan Portability is a Khronos initiative to promote the consistent use of Vulkan functionality that is layered over other underlying APIs to enable the portable deployment of Vulkan applications on platforms without Vulkan native drivers, such as Apple’s macOS and iOS. In March 2024, Richard Wright from LunarG updated the State of Vulkan on Apple Devices white paper to reflect the latest availability of the Vulkan SDK on Apple platforms, and its ability to be used to develop applications that are fully compatible with the Apple App Store.

In this tutorial, Khronos member Steve Winston of Holochip uses the latest Khronos Vulkan samples to illustrate how to work with Vulkan on iOS.

In this Collabora blog, Frederic Plourde reflects on the strides made in recent months. It’s remarkable to see how OpenXR and Monado have evolved and are shaping the future of XR development. This blog post takes a closer look at the progress made and noteworthy achievements within the OpenXR ecosystem.

Intel announced that the oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler has completed conformance testing and is the first compiler officially supporting the full SYCL 2020 specification from the Khronos Group. Having it as a complete reference implementation is a major milestone not only for Intel, but for the entire accelerated computing software industry.

For developers, having a SYCL 2020-conformant compiler means they can have confidence that their SYCL code compiled by Intel’s compiler is portable and reliably performs on different GPUs in the long term. An application developed using SYCL 2020 can adapt to changing platform architecture and future generations of diverse and new accelerators. This worthy investment will continue adding value by reducing development and maintenance costs for many years as new architectures emerge.

At GDC 2024, AMD announced that FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3.1), AMD’s cutting-edge open upscaling technology, will be released later this year with Vulkan support. With Vulkan support, AMD opens up the possibilities for Linux-native games seeing support.

Khronos Group President Neil Trevett was honored with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement at The Polys - WebXR Awards. Cesium’s Patrick Cozzi presented the award stating, “Neil’s impact on the open 3D ecosystem is felt in practically every pixel that is rendered. His consensus-driven leadership at NVIDIA, The Khronos Group, and the Metaverse Standards Forum has facilitated cross-industry collaborations leading to so many open standards, including glTF, Vulkan, WebGL, OpenCL, OpenGL, and OpenGL ES. He masterfully knowns when to roll up his sleeves and when to create space for others. He listens to all perspectives and patiently seeks alignment - and translates vocabulary - across the industry.”

Congratulations Neil! We couldn’t be more proud.

NVK, the open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA hardware in Mesa, is now ready for prime time. The new merge request gets rid of the non-conformant implementation warnings and changes the Meson configuration option for NVK from nouveau-experimental to just nouveau. This will act as a signal to distros that it’s now time to start shipping NVK to users. NVK will be part of Mesa 24.1 and you should expect to see it in either the spring or fall release of your favorite Linux distro. NVK is now a conformant Vulkan 1.3 implementation on Turing (RTX 2000 and GTX 1600 series), Ampere (RTX 3000 series), and Ada (RTX 4000 series) GPUs.

To better support our Chinese members, the Khronos Group is happy to announce a new Khronos WeChat channel focusing on our API technologies. We have provided instructions and a QR code to allow for easy access.

The Khronos Group has released a free OpenXR Tutorial, designed to guide software developers through every step of creating an OpenXR application using Windows, Linux or Android. This web-based tutorial, produced by the OpenXR Working Group, is packed with detailed instructions, downloadable archives, and example code snippets to support developers as they set up an OpenXR development environment, connect to their preferred graphics API, and incorporate interactivity, extensions, and other advanced features.

In this blog, OpenXR Working Group Chair Alfredo Muniz, reflects on the last year of OpenXR development within the Khronos Working Group, including updates to the specification, the release of myriad extensions to support the latest XR developments, plus an ever-evolving suite of tools that has kept OpenXR at the forefront of cross-platform XR innovation. Alfredo also provides a glimpse of what the XR community can look forward to in 2024.

Software in the Public Interest announces full OpenGL 4.6 and OpenGL ES 3.2 conformance on the latest Apple M1/M2-series drivers. New feature include: robustness, SPIR-V, clip control, cull distance, compute shaders, upgraded transform feedback, and more!

The 2024 LunarG Vulkan Ecosystem and SDK Survey is now Open! Please share your feedback by taking the LunarG annual anonymous developer’s survey. Both LunarG and the Khronos Vulkan Working Group collect this data to drive 2024 investments. Your participation is crucial to this process! The survey results will be tabulated and shared with the Vulkan community. At the end of 2024, LunarG will report on what actions were taken and what results were achieved.

Thank you from LunarG and the Khronos Vulkan Working Group!

The Vulkan Working Group at Khronos has developed a set of video format decode and encode extensions, collectively referred to as “Vulkan Video.” Today, with the release of Vulkan 1.3.277, the Working Group is proud to announce the new Decode AV1 video extension. Similar to the Vulkan project in its goals, AV1 is a royalty-free open standard for video compression developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) delivering industry-leading performance and quality. The result of broad industry collaboration and support, the Decode AV1 extension is a major milestone that builds on the foundation of Vulkan Video to bring cross-platform portable and performant AV1 decode to engines and applications everywhere.

Today, The Khronos Group announced the latest roadmap milestone for the Vulkan API. The Vulkan roadmap targets the “immersive graphics” market, made up of mid- to high-end smartphones, tablets, laptops, consoles, and desktop devices. The Vulkan Roadmap 2024 milestone captures a set of capabilities that are expected to be supported in new products for that market, beginning in 2024. The roadmap specification provides a significant increase in functionality for the targeted devices and sets the evolutionary direction of the API, including both new hardware capabilities and improvements to the programming model for Vulkan developers.

The extensions and features required by Vulkan Roadmap 2024 include several newly released extensions, plus mandatory support for a number of previously optional features and increases in minimum hardware capabilities.

OpenXR has gained significant attention from AR, VR and MR—collectively known as XR—application developers and device manufacturers for its ability to simplify cross-platform development. As the OpenXR ecosystem expands to include even more devices, platforms and system architectures, such as split rendering using edge servers, there is a growing demand for a diversity of implementation choices, including open source.

The Monado open-source project from Collabora is being increasingly used in the implementation of diverse OpenXR-based systems. In this blog, we outline the significant updates and improvements that are being made to Monado thanks to the Khronos Group’s support for open-source development efforts that encourage growth of the wider OpenXR ecosystem.

Vulkanised 2024 is the largest event dedicated to developers using the Vulkan API, and will feature talks from Vulkan implementers, engine and framework builders, thought leaders, researchers, educators, and open-source tool providers from around the world. Speakers represent diverse organizations ranging from ARM, Autodesk, Meta, and NVIDIA, to UC Santa Cruz and the University of Vienna.

The three-day program will include:

• Technical sessions covering Vulkan validation, SDK installation, Vulkan development for Apple desktops and devices, and the new Vulkan Video Encode API.
• Case study and best practice presentations drawn from real-world implementations.
• Updates on the Vulkan SDK and development roadmap.
• Drinks reception, conference dinner, and daily networking lunches.

Khronos welcomes the work by Tyler Sorensen and Trail of Bits to increase security around the usage of Khronos APIs and have been working closely with them for several months to ensure that API implementers are aware and able to act on any issues. Khronos is also diligently exploring additional actions relating to API specifications, conformance testing, and platform vendor cooperation to continually strengthen safety and security when using Khronos compute and rendering APIs.

In February of 2023, LunarG conducted a Vulkan Ecosystem & SDK Survey. Many Vulkan developers shared their requests for improvements. LunarG took those suggestions to heart and made many enhancements to the Vulkan ecosystem this year. We’ve prepared a report for the Vulkan developer community that summarizes our work. Read on for more information.

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