LunarG releases new Windows, Linux, and macOS SDKs for Vulkan header 1.2.162.0. The prior SDK supported Vulkan API revision 1.2.154. Read on for information about the new features and added extensions.
Overview of new features in Vulkan SDK 1.2.162
New features in Windows and Linux SDKs
The new Windows and Linux SDKs provide support for the new Vulkan Ray Tracing functionality, the GFXReconstruct optimize utility, GPU assisted validation support for bounds checking of accesses from shaders, and a list of other new extensions. See the complete list below:
New Vulkan Ray Tracing support includes Validation layers and the final versions of Vulkan, GLSL, and SPIR-V extensions that integrate ray tracing into the existing Vulkan framework. New extensions include:
- VK_KHR_acceleration_structure
- VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline
- VK_KHR_ray_query
- VK_KHR_pipeline_library
- VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations
GFXReconstruct optimize utility has been added. See the GFXReconstruct documentation for more details.
GPU assisted validation support for bounds checking of accesses from shaders of uniform, storage, uniform texel, and storage texel buffers is included.
The Vulkan Configurator (vkconfig) has been updated to improve quality and stability. See the fixes included in this SDK here. See the Vulkan Configurator documentation for more information.
The SDK also adds support for new extensions:
- VK_NV_fragment_shading_rate_enums
- VK_QCOM_rotated_copy_commands
- VK_KHR_fragment_shading_rate
- VK_KHR_shader_terminate_invocation
- VK_EXT_device_memory_report
- VK_EXT_shader_image_atomic_int64
New Features in the macOS SDK
The Vulkan macOS SDK for 1.2.162 adds new features but does not include ray tracing support. Here’s the list:
The MoltenVKShaderConverter utility is added.
Updated MoltenVK to version 1.1.1 is included with many updates and bug fixes, highlights are:
- The latest SPIRV-Cross version
- Support for Mac Catalyst platform for iOS apps on macOS 11.0+ under both X86_64 and arm64 architectures
- Apple Silicon universal binaries (x86_64 and arm64)
The macOS SDK also add new extensions:
- VK_KHR_sampler_mirror_clamp_to_edge (iOS)
- VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore
- VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing (initial release limited to Metal Tier 1: 96/128 textures, 16 samplers)
- VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage (macOS)
- VK_EXT_private_data
- VK_EXT_subgroup_size_control
- VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_hdr
- VK_AMD_shader_image_load_store (macOS)
- VK_IMG_format_pvrtc (macOS)
For additional detail, please read the Release Notes for Linux, Release Notes for Windows, or Release Notes for macOS.
For More Information
LunarG software engineering experts create innovative products and services for open source and commercial customers using leading-edge 3D graphics and compute technologies, including Vulkan, SPIR-V, OpenXR, and OpenGL. We have strengths in performance analysis and tuning, runtime and tools development, shader optimizations, driver development, and porting engines and applications to Vulkan.
For more information about LunarG, please check out our LunarG.com website.
