Vulkan

Vulkan is a cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, and modern multi-core CPUs also.

Microsoft supports Vulkan 1.2 (and more) on Windows 10 and 11, with a downloadable compatibility pack.

Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D-graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media, and highly parallelized computing. Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more efficient CPU and GPU usage compared to the older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs. It does so by providing a considerably lower-level API for the application than the older APIs, that more closely resembles how modern GPUs work.

Vulkan is comparable to Apple's Metal API and Microsoft's Direct3D 12. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores.

Vulkan was first announced by the non-profit Khronos Group at GDC 2015. The Vulkan API was initially referred to as the "next generation OpenGL initiative", or "OpenGL next" by Khronos, but use of those names was discontinued when "Vulkan" was announced.

Vulkan is derived from and built upon components of AMD's Mantle API, which was donated by AMD to Khronos with the intent of giving Khronos a foundation on which to begin developing a low-level API that they could standardize across the industry.

Vulkan is intended to provide a variety of advantages over other APIs as well as over its predecessor, OpenGL. Vulkan offers lower overhead, more direct control over the GPU, and lower CPU usage. Its overall concept and feature set are similar to those of Mantle. They were later adopted by Microsoft with Direct3D 12 and by Apple with Metal.

Intended advantages of Vulkan over previous-generation APIs include the following: