ANGLE: Vulkan Back-end

ANGLE's Vulkan back-end implementation lives in this folder.

Vulkan is an explicit graphics API. It has a lot in common with other explicit APIs such as Microsoft‘s D3D12 and Apple’s Metal. Compared to APIs like OpenGL or D3D11 explicit APIs can offer a number of significant benefits:

  • Lower API call CPU overhead.
  • A smaller API surface with more direct hardware control.
  • Better support for multi-core programming.
  • Vulkan in particular has open-source tooling and tests.

Back-end Design

The RendererVk class represents an EGLDisplay. RendererVk owns shared global resources like the [VkDevice][VkDevice], [VkQueue][VkQueue], the Vulkan format tables and internal Vulkan shaders. The ContextVk class implements the back-end of a front-end OpenGL Context. ContextVk processes state changes and handles action commands like glDrawArrays and glDrawElements.

Implementation details can be found in the doc directory.