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, 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.