Support offered for next-gen GPU

18th February 2016

Qualcomm

Joe Bush

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Qualcomm Technologies has introduced support for the latest graphics and compute API from Khronos, Vulkan, on its Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU, which is embedded in its Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. Vulkan is the next generation open standard API for high efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs.

This ground-up design provides applications explicit control over GPU acceleration for improved performance and predictability. In addition to Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm Technologies is also planning Vulkan support for upcoming Adreno 5xx series GPUs as well as existing Adreno 4xx series GPUs. For next generation graphics and compute applications, APIs like Vulkan enable more realistic 3D graphic effects and more efficient GPU compute through optimal GPU hardware acceleration.

Vulkan supports multiple important features, such as:

• Explicit control over GPU operation, with minimised driver overhead for improved performance.
• Multi-threading friendly architecture to increase overall system performance.
• Optimal API design that can be used in a wide variety of devices including mobile, desktop, consoles and embedded platforms.
• Use of Khronos’ new SPIR-V intermediate representation for shading language flexibility and more predictable implementation behaviour.
• Extensible layered architecture that enables innovative tools without impacting production performance while validating, debugging, and profiling.
• Simple drivers for low overhead efficiency and cross vendor portability.

“We are pleased to have contributed to the definition of Khronos’ new Vulkan API. Qualcomm Technologies will be among the first to ship conformant Vulkan drivers, starting with Snapdragon 820’s embedded Adreno 530 GPU, and subsequently with our Adreno 4xx series GPUs. Vulkan enables the next generation of graphics performance by adding multi-threaded command buffer generation and explicit control of advanced graphics capabilities within Adreno GPUs,” commented Micah Knapp, Director of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies.

“In the coming days, we anticipate supporting Vulkan in the Snapdragon developer tools including Snapdragon Profiler and the Adreno SDK, to help application developers take advantage of this outstanding new API when creating graphics and compute applications for smartphones, tablets, VR HMDs and a variety of other types of devices that use Snapdragon processors.”