Khronos has revealed the means to port Vulkan applications onto any Apple device.
Vulkan is an application software interface (API) tool that allows for simplified development of apps. The API lays out the building blocks for app construction, then a developer comes and put those blocks together in whatever way they want.
The Vulkan Portability Initiative is comprised of members from Valve, LunarG and the Brenill Workshop. The group has compiled a collection of free source tools that allows for easy access of various development programs that enhance the creation process, software development kits (SDK) and runtime libraries which allow for Vulkan applications to run on macOS.
“We have been running substantial production loads through the Vulkan tools on Mac, including Dota 2 which is now running faster than the native OpenGL version,” said Pierre-Loup Griffais at Valve. “These efforts are aimed toward reducing development and porting costs for any developer supporting multiple platforms.”
LunarG Vulkan SDK for macOS is available today as an open source. This allows developers to build, run and debug any Vulkan application on any iOS platform. The LunarG SDK for macOS grants developers the ability to view and change loader and validation layers which in turn allows programmers to check code for correct APR usage.
“Running Vulkan applications on Apple platforms has been the number one request from developers and today’s release of the MoltenVK runtime and LunarG macOS SDK brings that capability to life,” said Neil Trevett, VP NVIDIA and Khronos Group President. “Developers are invited to download the open source Vulkan Portability tools today and provide feedback via Vulkan Ecosystem GitHub Issue. The Vulkan Portability Initiative will continue to strengthen the infrastructure and tooling around bringing Vulkan capabilities to multiple Metal and DX12 platforms – our long-term goal is to enable portable Vulkan code to be executed on any platform that developers care about.”
Vulkan support for Dota 2 on macOS will be released as a free update in the coming months.
