Quick starts for developers

Vulkan provides high efficiency, cross-platform access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs used in a variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.

Imagination’s Graham Deacon, Senior Director, PowerVR Business Operations, commented: “Imagination was a major contributor to the Vulkan API, and was among the first to demonstrate it on mobile platforms. Now that the specification is released, we feel that it is important to get it into the hands of developers as soon as possible. With this new SDK, they have a powerful tool for game and application development on PowerVR-based platforms, which include some of the world’s most popular smartphones, tablets, OTT set-top boxes and other consumer products.”

The PowerVR Framework, a cross-platform and cross-API framework that acts as a scaffold around which developers can build their own rendering or game engine, now features a fully functioning Vulkan back-end. This lightweight abstraction layer provides utility functions that enable explicit control of Vulkan while reducing the amount of code required to render a scene. It features functions for common tasks such as object creation and asset uploading, simplified object lifetime management and cross-platform set-up. It also includes Imagination’s Gnome Horde demo, included as an example to show multi-threaded command buffer management for Vulkan.

The entire PowerVR Graphics SDK is now distributed freely. The SDK for Vulkan offers cross-platform support for multiple GPU architectures (PowerVR and desktop GPUs) as well as multiple operating systems (Android, Windows and Linux).

Together with the PowerVR Graphics SDK, Imagination offers a complete set of advanced tools for graphics developers. The latest release includes several new features and enhancements. PVRShaderEditor now supports the ability to choose different compilers per shader, and PVRGeoPOD supports 3DSMax 2016 SP2. PVRTrace now includes a full ‘Call Hierarchy’ which will show all a call’s dependencies at a point in time, and also now enables viewing of buffer object data. Finally, PVRTune now includes new counters for ‘ISP pixel load’ and ‘Overdraw.’

Developers can join the PowerVR Insider community and interact through developer forums at http://community.imgtec.com/developers/powervr; and can download the tools and SDK for free at https://community.imgtec.com/developers/powervr/installers. Additional resources are available on Imagination’s Vulkan page at www.imgtec.com/vulkan. All PowerVR Rogue GPUs are capable of supporting Vulkan.