Vulkan is based on Mantle’s specifications, according to Khronos Group. AMD shared their information with Khronos and let them effectively take over the work of creating a new, low-level graphics API. Mantle had already proven that this kind of API would work on PC, and that it no longer made sense to continue paying the high driver-overhead of earlier versions of DirectX (something that Microsoft appeared to agree with when they built DirectX 12).

But what makes Vulkan different is that it is not controlled by a single platform holder. It will work across all platforms, desktop and mobile, according to Khronos. One of the goals for Vulkan was to avoid an onslaught of platform or vendor-specific APIs. Already, EA have said they are moving their Mantle renderer for Frostbite over to Vulkan.

Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais also spoke at the session, explaining why Vulkan was so important to Valve’s plans for the future.

Conceding that developers would have to be more careful due to the lack of error-management that DirectX used to provide, he explained that Valve were very bullish on Vulkan’s prospects and already support it with Source 2, and it will be supported across the board on Steam Machines.

Valve also demoed Dota 2 running in Source 2 on Vulkan, using Intel’s integrated graphics.

Even more exciting, a Dan Baker from Oxide took the stage and said that, under Vulkan, there is currently no GPU available that will max-out the CPU. By solving the CPU bottleneck and spreading the driver load over multiple cores, current GPUs won’t have the sync problems they had under DirectX.

“Until the GPU manufacturers get their act together and make GPUs ten times faster than we have now, we can't max out the CPU,” he said.

Full Article: http://www.pcgamesn.com/khronos-and-valve-reveal-details-of-vulkan-api-show-dota-2-running-in-source-2-on-intel-integrated-graphics

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https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

This is very exciting. I cant wait to get my hands on the API and I hope it scales to mobile with minimal retooling.

From my understanding, OpenGL had problems because it is widely used for non-gaming applications. As a result, it had all this baggage that games don't use. Vulkan, on the other hand, is designed for gaming. What's great is that it's a platform agnostic API, so Linux will also benefit from this.

Great news, it's really good to see OpenGL trying to reach again its full glory and tech leadership of Silicon Graphics times, but now more open than ever and safer from venomous attacks.

very good move by AMD, Khronos and Valve - stepping away from Mantle made it a serious contender with DX12 and the Mantle intiative itself led to solving most of the draw-call overload especially AMDs own CPUs were suffering from

and Valve now has a low lvl API for SteamOS, which could perform at similar lvls as DX12 on Win10

I wonder if we will see this on PS4 one day. Being as though Sony is a member of the guys making the API, there seems to be no reason why not. Sony already has a low level API, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see this on PS4 one day.

Sony has contributed to the realization of these API. 100% will be used on PS4.

Could be used in ports that don't need any real optimization to run like most indie titles etc, but I think for more demanding titles they made sure it's easy to convert a Vulkan title to the PS4s native API.

AMD reached it's goal with Mantle, it's good to see they put their backs behind Vulkan. Now my Athlon 860k will really fire at all registers

As Sony contributed, they are both modern graphics APIs, and Sony left behind its past of hard to program consoles, it's not to be ruled out that they be easily convertable to each other.