According to the Vulkan working group, the ground-up redesign of the Next Generation OpenGL Initiative, is supposed to give applications direct control over GPU acceleration for maximized performance. It was supposed to be with us now.

However on the group’s website the year-end target release date for Vulkan will not be met. Apparently the specification is complete and undergoing legal review and final polishing. They are not saying why this all took so long, obviously there was a bit of brasso needed on the final polish.

“The Vulkan conformance tests are being finalized and multiple member companies are preparing drivers for release. Implementation feedback is the vital final stage of making any Khronos specification ready for primetime, and the Vulkan 1.0 specification will be published when the first conformant implementations are confirmed,” the working group said.

Apparently the Vulkan SDKs for Windows, Android and Linux are nearly done. Google has upgraded to Promoter membership and is now on the Khronos Board to help steer Vulkan strategy for Android and the wider industry. Looks like this will be a 2016 story.

“There is considerable energy driving the work to bring you Vulkan. We are planning Vulkan sessions and demos at key industry events throughout the year. We are excited about the emerging Vulkan ecosystem that will create new business opportunities for the graphics and compute industry,” the site added.