At XDC 2026, Aitor Camacho Larrondo asked developers to start using KosmicKrisp on real apps. KosmicKrisp is a Vulkan-conformant Vulkan-to-Metal driver for macOS 26+ on M1–M5 and A18 Pro (MacBook Neo). It is now Vulkan 1.4 conformant, with tessellation, robustness2, multi-draw, and more Metal/MSL workarounds.
Aitor’s talk covered what “production-ready” means in the context of KosmicKrisp. “Production ready” here is not a slogan. It is three bars that KosmicKrisp now clears well enough to ask developers to adopt it: conformance, performance, and CI.
Conformance: KosmicKrisp is a Vulkan 1.4-conformant ICD on macOS 26+ for Apple silicon (M1–M5) and A18 Pro. That is a spec-tested API surface, not a best-effort translation. Non-core support now includes tessellation, robustness2, and multi-draw, plus more workarounds for Metal and MSL issues. Community contributions, including from @squidbus, helped close that gap.
Performance: In his talk, Aitor discussed how performance optimization efforts have helped KosmicKrisp meet and exceed the performance of MoltenVK. On GFXBench Aztec Ruins (M3 Pro, offscreen), a run of optimizations—fast math, dynamic store ops (@KObin), triangle-merge, depth-write narrowing, constant data, and a sync rework—moved KosmicKrisp from a June baseline of 3,702 / 8,309 to 11,672 / 27,747 (high / normal), 3.15× / 3.34× that baseline and slightly ahead of MoltenVK on that benchmark. Android Emulator 3DMark WildLife runs were within a few percent of MoltenVK. Optimization work is continuing and more demanding applications (Godot, Blender, etc.) are now being used to guide optimization efforts.
CI: LunarG’s rule is that production software needs infrastructure, not only passing tests on a desktop. KosmicKrisp CI runs at LunarG (not in Mesa CI) on M1, M2, and M4 machines with macOS 26. Nightly jobs include Vulkan CTS 1.5.2, real-workload replay through GFXReconstruct and the Android Emulator, and Fossilize pipeline sets that have already caught compiler bugs. That is what makes conformance and performance stick as the code keeps moving.
Together, those three are the ask: the API contract holds, the driver is fast enough to ship, and regressions have a place to get caught.
Check out all the details in Aitor’s talk!
Slides (PDF): XDC 2026 — KosmicKrisp Production Ready
