KosmicKrisp – Vulkan 1.3 Conformance on Apple Silicon
At XDC 2025 in Vienna, Austria, LunarG proudly showcased KosmicKrisp, a groundbreaking Vulkan-to-Metal Mesa driver designed to bring Vulkan 1.3 conformance to Apple Silicon platforms. Led by Aitor Camacho Larrondo, this innovative project marks a significant milestone in enabling high-performance graphics and compute workloads on macOS, aligning Vulkan capabilities with the power of Apple’s M1-series and beyond.
Executive Overview
KosmicKrisp is a Vulkan driver that translates Vulkan API calls to Apple’s Metal framework, built within Mesa’s robust Vulkan driver framework. Targeting macOS 13+ (Vulkan 1.2) and macOS 15+ (Vulkan 1.3), it achieves full Vulkan 1.3 Conformance Test Suite (CTS) compliance—an impressive feat accomplished in just 10 months from a blank slate. Key highlights include:
- Vulkan 1.3 Conformance: KosmicKrisp eliminates the need for Vulkan Portability, delivering a fully conformant Vulkan driver for Apple Silicon.
- Mesa-Powered Efficiency: Leveraging Mesa’s NIR intermediate representation and in-tree MIT-licensed tools, KosmicKrisp offers a streamlined development environment, removing dependencies like SPIRV-Cross.
- Optimized for Apple Silicon: Built with Metal 3.1 (macOS 13) as a baseline and Metal 3.2 (macOS 15) for Vulkan 1.3, it supports modern features like dynamic rendering and bindless textures from the ground up.
- Rapid Development Timeline: From compute tests in February 2025 to a fully passing Vulkan 1.3 CTS by September 2025, KosmicKrisp showcases LunarG’s commitment to accelerated driver development.
The architecture addresses Metal’s limitations through clever emulation (e.g., 1D textures as 2D, visibility queries via dedicated buffers) and leverages NIR for critical functionality like blending and texture sampling. Despite challenges like Metal’s lack of a public specification and MSL compiler bugs, the team achieved a robust solution, with plans to merge upstream and integrate into LunarG’s CI for real-world testing.
Why It Matters
KosmicKrisp empowers developers to build Vulkan applications on macOS with the same fidelity as other platforms, unlocking new possibilities for games, emulators, and compute workloads on Apple Silicon. With Google’s sponsorship and enthusiasm—highlighted by Serdar Kocdemir’s endorsement for enhancing the Android Emulator—KosmicKrisp is poised to elevate the Vulkan developer experience across ecosystems.
What’s Next?
The team is focused on upstreaming to Mesa, expanding real-world testing, and integrating KosmicKrisp into LunarG’s Vulkan macOS SDK alongside MoltenVK. Future goals include Vulkan 1.4 support, sparse memory, tessellation, mesh shaders, and potentially ray tracing.
Access the Presentation
Missed the XDC 2025 talk? You can now:
- Download the Slides: Get the full 15-page presentation deck here
- Watch the Video: View the recorded session, including a demo of the Android Emulator running via KosmicKrisp, here.
Acknowledgements
A huge thanks to Aitor Camacho Larrondo (lead architect), Arcady Goldmints-Orlov (NIR->MSL compiler), Alyssa Anne Rosenzweig (mentorship), and our sponsor, Google, for making KosmicKrisp a reality.
Stay tuned for more updates as we push the boundaries of Vulkan on Apple Silicon!
#Vulkan #KosmicKrisp #AppleSilicon #Mesa #GameDev #LunarG
About LunarG
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