That architecture proved useful when we contributed the source code and API specification of Mantle to serve as the foundation of Vulkan® in May of 2015. Though the Mantle API was tailored for AMD hardware, Mantle was also designed with just enough hardware abstraction to accommodate almost any modern graphics architecture. Most importantly for gamers, Mantle got the industry thinking about how much additional GPU performance could be unlocked with a low-overhead graphics API.

Mantle was the first of its kind: the first low-overhead PC graphics API, the first to grant unprecedented access to PC GPU resources, and the first to offer absolute control of those resources. Vulkan® inherits these capabilities from AMD’s Mantle graphics API. Vulkan® also exposes GPU hardware features not ordinarily accessible through OpenGL®. Reducing this overhead gives hardware much more time to spend on delivering meaningful features, performance and image quality. Designed with “low-overhead” capabilities, Vulkan® gives devs total control over the performance, efficiency, and capabilities of Radeon™ GPUs and multi-core CPUs.Ĭompared to OpenGL®, Vulkan® substantially reduces “API overhead,” which is background work a CPU must do to interpret what a game is asking of the hardware.

From the consortium that brought you OpenGL®, Vulkan® is a new graphics API for developers who want or need deeper hardware control.

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