New Vulkan SDKs with enhanced developer support for Apple platforms

LunarG releases new Windows, Linux, and macOS SDKs for Vulkan header 1.2.162.  New SDKs provide advanced developer support for Apple platforms and a new 1.0 version of Synchronization Validation that moves beyond alpha. Read on for information about the new features and updates.

Overview of new features in Vulkan SDK 1.2.162.1

macOS SDK

The new macOS SDK provides support for the following new features and updates:

1. Synchronization Validation is now at release “1.0,” meaning it is no longer considered an “alpha” release. See the Synchronization Validation documentation.
2. The devsim layer has been ported to the macOS SDK. See the devsim documentation.
3. The Vulkan Configurator has been updated to expose devsim JSON configuration files to be used with the portability subset extension.
4. The validation layers provide validation for the VK_KHR_portability_subset extension.
5. Universal binaries that support Apple Silicon are now included with the macOS SDK for the Vulkan Loader, Validation Layers, and all command-line tools and libraries.
6. Vulkan Info can now be built and run on iOS devices. See the vulkaninfo documentation for more information.

Windows and Linux SDKs

The new Windows and Linux SDKs provide support for the following new features and updates:

1. Synchronization Validation is now at release “1.0,” meaning it is no longer considered an “alpha” release. See the Synchronization Validation documentation.
2. The Vulkan Configurator has been updated to expose devsim JSON configuration files to be used with the portability subset extension.
3. The validation layers provide validation for the VK_KHR_portability_subset extension.
4. GFXReconstruct has been updated to fix a replay issue that may result in a crash after a vkAllocateDescriptorSets failure with VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_POOL_MEMORY.

For additional detail, please read the Release Notes for Linux, Release Notes for Windows, or Release Notes for macOS.

To access the new Vulkan SDKs, go to the Vulkan SDK download site.

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.