Vulkan (1.0 at least) being a badly designed API doesn't mean that OpenGL will be maintained unfortunately. Work on OpenGL pretty much stopped in 2017.
I am sadly aware, but I won't switch until the complexity is fixed. Although I did kind of switch, but to CUDA because the overengineered complexity of Vulkan drove me away. I'm neither smart nor patient enough for that. What should be a malloc is a PhD thesis in Vulkan, what should be a memcpy is another thesis, and what should be a simple kernel launch is insanity.
> I am sadly aware, but I won't switch until the complexity is fixed
It pretty much is by now if you can use Vulkan 1.4 (or even 1.3). It's a pretty lean and mean API once you've got it bootstrapped.
There's still a lot of setup code to get off the ground (device enumeration, extensions and features, swapchain setup, pipeline layouts), but beyond that Vulkan is much nicer to work with than OpenGL. Just gotta get past the initial hurdle.
It's steadily getting better as they keep walking back aspects which turned out to be needlessly complex, or only needed to be complex for the sake of older hardware that hardly anyone cares about anymore, but yeah there's still a way to go. Those simpler ways of doing things are just grafted onto the side of the existing API surface so just knowing which parts you're supposed to use is a battle in itself. Hopefully they'll eventually do a clean-slate Vulkan 2.0 to tidy up the cruft, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
Might be getting better but just yesterday I dabbled in Vulkan again, digging through the examples from https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan, and the complexity is pure insanity. What should be a simple malloc ends up being 40 lines of code, what should be a simple memcpy is another 30 lines of code, and what should be a single-line kernel launch is another 50 lines of bindings, layouts, pipelines, etc.
Tbf, a lot of the complexity (also in the official Khronos samples) is caused by insane C++ abstraction layers and 'helper frameworks' on top of the actual Vulkan C API.
Just directly talking to the C API in the tutorials/examples instead of custom wrapper code would be a lot more helpful since you'd don't need to sift through the custom abstraction layers (even if it would be slightly more code).
E.g. have a look at the code snippets in here and weep in despair ;)
Why should these things be simple? Graphics hardware varies greatly even across generations from the same vendors. Vulkan as an API is trying to offer the most functionality to as much of this hardware as possible. That means you have a lot of dials to tweak.
Trying to obfuscate all the options goes against what Vulkan was created for. Use OpenGL 4.6/WebGPU if you want simplicity.
A simple vkCreateSystemDefaultDevice() function like on Metal instead of requiring hundreds of lines of boilerplate would go a long way to make Vulkan more ergonomic without having to give up a more verbose fallback path for the handful Vulkan applications that need to pick a very specific device (and then probably pick the wrong one on exotic hardware configs).
And the rest of the API is full of similar examples of wasting developer time for the common code path.
Metal is a great example of providing both: a convenient 'beaten path' for 90% of use cases but still offering more verbose fallbacks when flexibility is needed.
Arguably, the original idea to provide a low-level explicit API also didn't quite work. Since GPU architectures are still vastly different (especially across desktop and mobile GPUs), a slightly more abstract API would be able to provide more wiggle room for drivers to implement an API feature more efficiently under the hood, and without requiring users to write different code paths for each GPU vendor.
Metal has the benefit of being developed by Apple for Apple devices. I'd imagine that constraint allows them to simplify code paths in a way Vulkan can't/won't. Again, Metal doesn't have to deal with supporting dozens of different hardware systems like Vulkan does.
Metal also works for external GPUs like NVIDIA or AMD though (not sure how much effort Apple still puts into those use cases, but Metal itself is flexible enough to deal with non-Apple GPUs).
CUDA can be complex if you want, but it offers more powerful functionality as an option that you can choose, rather than mandating maximum complexity right from the start. This is where Vulkan absolutely fails. It makes everything maximum effort, rather than making the common things easy.
I think CUDA and Vulkan are two completely different beasts, so I don't believe this is a good comparison. One is for GPGPU, and the other is a graphics API with compute shaders.
Also, CUDA is targeting a single vendor, whereas Vulkan is targeting as many platforms as possible.
The point still stands: Vulkan chose to go all-in on mandatory maximum complexity, instead of providing less-complex routes for the common cases. Several extensions in recent years have reduced that burden because it was recognized that this is an actual issue, and it demonstrated that less complexity would have been possible right from the start. Still a long way to go, though.
So I've been told so I'm trying to take another look at it. At least the examples at https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan, which are probably not 1.3/1.4 yet except for the trianglevulkan13 example, are pure insanity. Coming from CUDA, I can't fathom why what should be simple things like malloc, memcpy and kernel launches, end up needing 300x as many lines.
In part, because Vulkan is a graphics API, not a GPGPU framework like CUDA. They're entirely different beasts.
Vulkan is also trying to expose as many options as possible so as to be extensible on as many platforms as possible. Also, Vulkan isn't even trying to make it more complex than it need be--this is just how complex graphics programming is period. The only reasons people think Vulkan/DX12 are overly complicated is because they're used to using APIs where the majority of the heavy lifting comes from the drivers.
No, it is overly complex for modern hardware (unless you use shader objects). Vulkan forces you to statically specify a ton of state that's actually dynamic on modern GPUs. You could cut things down a ton with a new API. Ofc you'd have to require a certain level of hardware support, but imo that will become natural going forward.
Actually, it would be kinda neat to see an API that's fully designed assuming a coherent, cached, shared memory space between device and host. Metal I guess is closest.
> In part, because Vulkan is a graphics API, not a GPGPU framework like CUDA. They're entirely different beasts.
Tbf, the distinction between rendering and compute has been disappearing for quite a while now, apart from texture sampling there isn't much reason to have hardware that's dedicated for rendering tasks on GPUs, and when there's hardly any dedicated rendering hardware on GPUs, why still have dedicated rendering APIs?
Yes, I predict eventually we will be back at software rendering, with the difference that now it will be hardware accelerated due to running on compute hardware.
The point is that a (self-declared) low-level API like Vulkan should just be a thin interface to GPU hardware features. For instance the entire machinery to define a vertex layout in the PSO is pretty much obsolete today, vertex pulling is much more flexible and requires less API surface, and this is just one example of the "disappearing 3D API".
More traditional rendering APIs can then be build on top of such a "compute-first-API", but that shouldn't be the job Khronos.
I'm fairly sure Vulkan runs just fine on Android? You won't have access to dynamic rendering, so you'll have to manage renderpasses, but I don't think you're going to have issues running Vulkan on a modern Android device.
Vulkan (1.0 at least) being a badly designed API doesn't mean that OpenGL will be maintained unfortunately. Work on OpenGL pretty much stopped in 2017.
I am sadly aware, but I won't switch until the complexity is fixed. Although I did kind of switch, but to CUDA because the overengineered complexity of Vulkan drove me away. I'm neither smart nor patient enough for that. What should be a malloc is a PhD thesis in Vulkan, what should be a memcpy is another thesis, and what should be a simple kernel launch is insanity.
> I am sadly aware, but I won't switch until the complexity is fixed
It pretty much is by now if you can use Vulkan 1.4 (or even 1.3). It's a pretty lean and mean API once you've got it bootstrapped.
There's still a lot of setup code to get off the ground (device enumeration, extensions and features, swapchain setup, pipeline layouts), but beyond that Vulkan is much nicer to work with than OpenGL. Just gotta get past the initial hurdle.
It's steadily getting better as they keep walking back aspects which turned out to be needlessly complex, or only needed to be complex for the sake of older hardware that hardly anyone cares about anymore, but yeah there's still a way to go. Those simpler ways of doing things are just grafted onto the side of the existing API surface so just knowing which parts you're supposed to use is a battle in itself. Hopefully they'll eventually do a clean-slate Vulkan 2.0 to tidy up the cruft, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
Might be getting better but just yesterday I dabbled in Vulkan again, digging through the examples from https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan, and the complexity is pure insanity. What should be a simple malloc ends up being 40 lines of code, what should be a simple memcpy is another 30 lines of code, and what should be a single-line kernel launch is another 50 lines of bindings, layouts, pipelines, etc.
Tbf, a lot of the complexity (also in the official Khronos samples) is caused by insane C++ abstraction layers and 'helper frameworks' on top of the actual Vulkan C API.
Just directly talking to the C API in the tutorials/examples instead of custom wrapper code would be a lot more helpful since you'd don't need to sift through the custom abstraction layers (even if it would be slightly more code).
E.g. have a look at the code snippets in here and weep in despair ;)
https://docs.vulkan.org/tutorial/latest/03_Drawing_a_triangl...
Why should these things be simple? Graphics hardware varies greatly even across generations from the same vendors. Vulkan as an API is trying to offer the most functionality to as much of this hardware as possible. That means you have a lot of dials to tweak.
Trying to obfuscate all the options goes against what Vulkan was created for. Use OpenGL 4.6/WebGPU if you want simplicity.
A simple vkCreateSystemDefaultDevice() function like on Metal instead of requiring hundreds of lines of boilerplate would go a long way to make Vulkan more ergonomic without having to give up a more verbose fallback path for the handful Vulkan applications that need to pick a very specific device (and then probably pick the wrong one on exotic hardware configs).
And the rest of the API is full of similar examples of wasting developer time for the common code path.
Metal is a great example of providing both: a convenient 'beaten path' for 90% of use cases but still offering more verbose fallbacks when flexibility is needed.
Arguably, the original idea to provide a low-level explicit API also didn't quite work. Since GPU architectures are still vastly different (especially across desktop and mobile GPUs), a slightly more abstract API would be able to provide more wiggle room for drivers to implement an API feature more efficiently under the hood, and without requiring users to write different code paths for each GPU vendor.
Metal has the benefit of being developed by Apple for Apple devices. I'd imagine that constraint allows them to simplify code paths in a way Vulkan can't/won't. Again, Metal doesn't have to deal with supporting dozens of different hardware systems like Vulkan does.
Metal also works for external GPUs like NVIDIA or AMD though (not sure how much effort Apple still puts into those use cases, but Metal itself is flexible enough to deal with non-Apple GPUs).
CUDA can be complex if you want, but it offers more powerful functionality as an option that you can choose, rather than mandating maximum complexity right from the start. This is where Vulkan absolutely fails. It makes everything maximum effort, rather than making the common things easy.
I think CUDA and Vulkan are two completely different beasts, so I don't believe this is a good comparison. One is for GPGPU, and the other is a graphics API with compute shaders.
Also, CUDA is targeting a single vendor, whereas Vulkan is targeting as many platforms as possible.
The point still stands: Vulkan chose to go all-in on mandatory maximum complexity, instead of providing less-complex routes for the common cases. Several extensions in recent years have reduced that burden because it was recognized that this is an actual issue, and it demonstrated that less complexity would have been possible right from the start. Still a long way to go, though.
Yes, recent example, the board getting released by Qualcomm after acquiring Arduino.
Between OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.1, I would certainly go with OpenGL ES.
Oh I didn't know the new Arduino board had a GPU. Do we know what kind?
Yes, Adreno 702
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/internet-of-things/robotic...
I don't doubt OpenGL will live forever. But Vulkan 1.3/1.4 is not as bad as people make it out to be.
So I've been told so I'm trying to take another look at it. At least the examples at https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan, which are probably not 1.3/1.4 yet except for the trianglevulkan13 example, are pure insanity. Coming from CUDA, I can't fathom why what should be simple things like malloc, memcpy and kernel launches, end up needing 300x as many lines.
In part, because Vulkan is a graphics API, not a GPGPU framework like CUDA. They're entirely different beasts.
Vulkan is also trying to expose as many options as possible so as to be extensible on as many platforms as possible. Also, Vulkan isn't even trying to make it more complex than it need be--this is just how complex graphics programming is period. The only reasons people think Vulkan/DX12 are overly complicated is because they're used to using APIs where the majority of the heavy lifting comes from the drivers.
No, it is overly complex for modern hardware (unless you use shader objects). Vulkan forces you to statically specify a ton of state that's actually dynamic on modern GPUs. You could cut things down a ton with a new API. Ofc you'd have to require a certain level of hardware support, but imo that will become natural going forward.
Actually, it would be kinda neat to see an API that's fully designed assuming a coherent, cached, shared memory space between device and host. Metal I guess is closest.
> Vulkan forces you to statically specify a ton of state that's actually dynamic on modern GPUs.
Desktop GPUs. Tiling GPUs are still in use on mobile and you can't use the tiling hardware effectively without baking the description into pipelines.
> You could cut things down a ton with a new API.
VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering is what you are looking for
> Actually, it would be kinda neat to see an API that's fully designed assuming a coherent, cached, shared memory space between device and host.
You can just ask for exactly that--even on Vulkan. If you don't want to support computer systems that don't support RBAR, you can do that.
>Ofc you'd have to require a certain level of hardware support
Have you used Vulkan? Specifying required hardware support for your physical device is literally one of the first thing you do when setting up Vulkan.
> In part, because Vulkan is a graphics API, not a GPGPU framework like CUDA. They're entirely different beasts.
Tbf, the distinction between rendering and compute has been disappearing for quite a while now, apart from texture sampling there isn't much reason to have hardware that's dedicated for rendering tasks on GPUs, and when there's hardly any dedicated rendering hardware on GPUs, why still have dedicated rendering APIs?
And, mesh shading in particular is basically "what if we just deleted all that vertex specification crap and made you write a compute shader"
Note that it's not always better. The task shaders are quite hardware specific and it makes sense to ship defaults inside the driver.
Yes, I predict eventually we will be back at software rendering, with the difference that now it will be hardware accelerated due to running on compute hardware.
This is not a statement on the hardware, it's a statement on what the APIs are trying to achieve. In this regard, they are remarkably different.
The point is that a (self-declared) low-level API like Vulkan should just be a thin interface to GPU hardware features. For instance the entire machinery to define a vertex layout in the PSO is pretty much obsolete today, vertex pulling is much more flexible and requires less API surface, and this is just one example of the "disappearing 3D API".
More traditional rendering APIs can then be build on top of such a "compute-first-API", but that shouldn't be the job Khronos.
Except that you also need to have it available on target systems, good luck on Android.
I'm fairly sure Vulkan runs just fine on Android? You won't have access to dynamic rendering, so you'll have to manage renderpasses, but I don't think you're going to have issues running Vulkan on a modern Android device.