Vulkan^® Guide

The Vulkan Guide is designed to help developers get up and going with the world of Vulkan. It is aimed to be a light read that leads to many other useful links depending on what a developer is looking for. All information is intended to help better fill the gaps about the many nuances of Vulkan.

1. Logistics Overview

1.1. What is Vulkan?

1.2. What you can do with Vulkan

1.3. Vulkan Spec

1.4. Platforms

1.5. Checking for Support

1.6. Versions

1.7. Vulkan Release Summary

1.8. What is SPIR-V?

1.9. Portability Initiative

1.10. Vulkan CTS

1.11. Vulkan Development Tools

1.12. Vulkan Validation Overview

1.13. Vulkan Decoder Ring (GL, GLES, DirectX, and Metal)

2. Using Vulkan

2.1. Loader

2.2. Layers

2.3. Querying Properties, Extensions, Features, Limits, and Formats

2.3.1. Enabling Extensions

2.3.2. Enabling Features

2.4. Queues and Queue Family

2.5. WSI

2.6. pNext and sType

2.7. Synchronization

2.7.1. Porting to VK_KHR_synchronization2

2.8. Memory Allocation Strategy

2.8.1. Sparse Resources

2.8.2. Protected Memory

2.9. Pipeline Caching/Derivatives

2.10. Threading

2.11. Mapping Data to Shaders

2.11.1. Vertex Input Data Processing

2.12. Robustness

• VK_EXT_image_robustness, VK_EXT_robustness2

2.13. Dynamic State

• VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state, VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state2, VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state, VK_EXT_color_write_enable

2.14. Subgroups

2.15. Atomics

2.16. Common Pitfalls

3. When and Why to use Extensions

Note	Note These are supplemental references for the various Vulkan Extensions. Please consult the Vulkan Spec for further details on any extension

3.1. Cleanup Extensions

• VK_EXT_4444_formats, VK_KHR_bind_memory2, VK_KHR_create_renderpass2, VK_KHR_dedicated_allocation, VK_KHR_driver_properties, VK_KHR_get_memory_requirements2, VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2, VK_EXT_host_query_reset, VK_KHR_maintenance1, VK_KHR_maintenance2, VK_KHR_maintenance3, VK_KHR_separate_depth_stencil_layouts, VK_KHR_depth_stencil_resolve, VK_EXT_separate_stencil_usage, VK_EXT_sampler_filter_minmax, VK_KHR_sampler_mirror_clamp_to_edge, VK_EXT_ycbcr_2plane_444_formats

3.2. Device Groups

• VK_KHR_device_group, VK_KHR_device_group_creation

3.3. External Memory and Sychronization

• VK_KHR_external_fence, VK_KHR_external_memory, VK_KHR_external_semaphore

3.4. Ray Tracing

• VK_KHR_acceleration_structure, VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline, VK_KHR_ray_query, VK_KHR_pipeline_library, VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations

3.5. Shader Features

• VK_KHR_8bit_storage, VK_KHR_16bit_storage, VK_KHR_relaxed_block_layout, VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64, VK_EXT_scalar_block_layout, VK_KHR_shader_clock, VK_EXT_shader_demote_to_helper_invocation, VK_KHR_shader_draw_parameters, VK_KHR_shader_float16_int8, VK_KHR_shader_float_controls, VK_KHR_shader_non_semantic_info, VK_EXT_shader_stencil_export, VK_EXT_shader_subgroup_ballot, VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_extended_types, VK_EXT_shader_subgroup_vote, VK_KHR_shader_terminate_invocation, VK_EXT_shader_viewport_index_layer, VK_KHR_spirv_1_4, VK_KHR_storage_buffer_storage_class, VK_EXT_subgroup_size_control, VK_KHR_uniform_buffer_standard_layout, VK_KHR_variable_pointers, VK_KHR_vulkan_memory_model, VK_KHR_workgroup_memory_explicit_layout, VK_KHR_zero_initialize_workgroup_memory

3.6. Translation Layer Extensions

• VK_EXT_custom_border_color, VK_EXT_depth_clip_enable, VK_EXT_provoking_vertex, VK_EXT_transform_feedback

3.7. VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing

3.8. VK_EXT_inline_uniform_block

3.9. VK_EXT_memory_priority

3.10. VK_KHR_descriptor_update_template

3.11. VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count

3.12. VK_KHR_image_format_list

3.13. VK_KHR_imageless_framebuffer

3.14. VK_KHR_sampler_ycbcr_conversion

3.15. VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore

3.16. VK_KHR_shader_subgroup_uniform_control_flow

4. Contributing

5. License

6. Code of conduct