MoltenVK

MoltenVK is a software library which allows Vulkan applications to run on top of Metal on Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems. It is the first software component to be released for the Vulkan Portability Initiative, a project to have a subset of Vulkan run on platforms which lack native Vulkan drivers.

MoltenVK
Developer(s)The Brenwill Workshop Ltd., Khronos Group
Initial releaseFebruary 26, 2018 (2018-02-26)[1]
Stable release
1.0.38 / 31 October 2019 (2019-10-31)
Written inObjective-C++, Objective-C, C++, C[2]
Operating systemmacOS, iOS
PlatformCross-platform
TypeWrapper library[2]
LicenseApache License 2.0
Websitegithub.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

There are some limitations compared with a native Vulkan implementation.[3]

History

MoltenVK was first released as a proprietary and commercially licensed product on July 27, 2016.[4]

On July 31, 2017, Khronos announced the formation of the Vulkan Portability Technical Subgroup.[5]

On February 26, 2018, Khronos announced that Vulkan became available on macOS and iOS products through the MoltenVK library.[6] Valve announced that Dota 2 will run on macOS using the Vulkan API with the aid of MoltenVK,[7] and that they had made an arrangement with developer The Brenwill Workshop Ltd to release MoltenVK as open-source software under the Apache License version 2.0.[8]

On May 30, 2018, Qt was updated with Vulkan for Qt on macOS using MoltenVK.[9] On May 31, 2018, optional Vulkan support for Dota 2 on macOS was released. Benchmarks for the game were available the following day, showing better performance using Vulkan and MoltenVK compared to OpenGL.[10] On July 20, 2018, Wine was updated with Vulkan support on macOS using MoltenVK.[11] On 29 July 2018, the first app using MoltenVK was accepted onto the App Store, after initially being rejected.[12] On 6 August 2018, Google open-sourced Filament, a crossplatform real-time physically based rendering engine with MoltenVK for macOS/iOS.[13] On November 28, 2018, Valve released Artifact, their first Vulkan-only game on macOS using MoltenVK.[14]

On 29 January 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.32 was released with early prototype of Vulkan Portability Extensions. RPCS3 and Dolphin emulators were updated with Vulkan support on macOS using MoltenVK.[15] On 13 April 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.34 was released with support for tessellation. On July 30, 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.36 was released targeting Metal 3.0.[16]

References
  1. "Vulkan Applications Enabled on Apple Platforms". Khronos Group Press Release.
  2. "MoltenVK is an implementation of the high-performance, industry-standard Vulkan graphics and compute API, that runs on Apple's Metal graphics framework, bringing Vulkan to iOS and macOS.: Khro." December 27, 2018 – via GitHub.
  3. "MoltenVK Runtime User Guide". Retrieved April 29, 2018.
  4. "MoltenVK brings Vulkan to iOS and macOS". The Brenwill Workshop Ltd. July 22, 2016. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  5. Larabel, Michael (July 31, 2017). "No Vulkan 1.1 Today, But There Is A New Initiative That Could Help macOS See Vulkan". Phoronix. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
  6. Bright, Peter (February 26, 2018). "Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  7. Larabel, Michael (February 26, 2018). "Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac". Phoronix. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  8. "Free and Open-Source Vulkan on macOS and iOS". Valve. February 26, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  9. says, Luciano Moffatt (May 30, 2018). "Vulkan for Qt on macOS". Qt Blog. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  10. Larabel, Michael (June 1, 2018). "Initial Vulkan Performance On macOS With Dota 2 Is Looking Very Good". Phoronix. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
  11. "Wine 3.13 Released". WineHQ. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  12. "Apple Accepts Updated MoltenVK-Using App/Game For Vulkan API On iOS - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  13. Sugandha Lahoti (August 6, 2018). "Google open sources Filament, a physically based rendering engine". Packt Hub. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  14. "Valve Releases Artifact As Its Cross-Platform, Vulkan-Powered Digital Card Game - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  15. Olson, Tom (May 20, 2019). "Vulkan: The State of the Union" (PDF). Khronos Group.
  16. "MoltenVK Now Supports More Vulkan Extensions, Begins Targeting Metal 3.0 - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved August 2, 2019.


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