Google’s biggest announcement today, at least as it pertains to Android, is that the Vulkan graphics API is now the official graphics API for Android. Vulkan is a modern, low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that provides developers with more direct control over the GPU than older APIs like OpenGL. This increased control allows for significantly improved performance, especially in multi-threaded applications, by reducing CPU overhead. In contrast, OpenGL is an older, higher-level API that abstracts away many of the low-level details of the GPU, making it easier to use but potentially less efficient. Essentially, Vulkan prioritizes performance and explicit hardware control, while OpenGL emphasizes ease of use and cross-platform compatibility.
↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority
Android has supported Vulkan since Android 7.0, released in 2016, so it’s not like we’re looking at something earth-shattering here. The issue has been, as always with Android, fragmentation: it’s taken this long for about 85% of Android devices currently in use to support Vulkan in the first place. In other words, Google might’ve wanted to standardise on Vulkan much sooner, but if only a relatively small number of Android devices support it, that’s going to be a hard sell.
In any event, from here on out, every application or game that wants to use the GPU on Android will have to do so through Vulkan, including everything inside Android. It’s still going to be a long process, though, as the requirement to use Vulkan will not fully come into effect until Android 17, and even then there will be exceptions for certain applications. Android tends to implement changes like this in phases, and the move to Vulkan is no different.
All of this does mean that older devices with GPUs that do not support Vulkan, or at least not properly, will not be able to be updated to the Vulkan-only releases of Android, but let’s be real here – those kinds of devices were never going to be updated anyway.
Good news. Everyone supports the vulkan standard except for apple it seems.
and Microsoft.
0brad0,
Are there any GPUs that don’t support vulkan on windows? I’d still count vulkan as supported if the manufactures of the iGPU/GPU you are using do support it on windows.
Well it looks like you’re right, after a little more searching I came across this and saw there is no native support for vulkan on windows ARM computers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1b4m1tg/windows_on_arm_users_have_any_of_you_played/
Vulkan to D3d wrapper could work but it’s a bummer there are no native drivers. I didn’t know.
I wonder why, ms has a compatibility pack for other platforms.
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nqpsl29bfff?hl=en-us&gl=US
Glide, OpenGL and Vulkan have worked under Windows just fine.
While Microsoft doesn’t “support” those, it doesn’t prevent IHVs from implementing them under Windows.
It only works on the Windows variants where ICD driver interface is still present, which isn’t the case on UWP applicationsor Windows on ARM.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/loading-an-opengl-installable-client-driver
OpenGL on ARM only works as subset compatibility mode,
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/announcing-the-opencl-and-opengl-compatibility-pack-for-windows-10-on-arm/
There is no first party Vulkan support on Playstation, Xbox, Switch (if you really want everything NVN is the way), Windows (support is via the legacy OpenGL ICD driver model that AMD, Intel, NVidia plug into, and Microsoft only keeps around due to backwards compatibility).