An exploratory study of high performance graphics application programming interfaces

This study was conducted to take an in depth look at the newest APIs offered to graphics programmers. With the recent releases of Vulkan (2016) and DirectX 12 (2015) from industry giants like the Khronos Group and Microsoft, it’s clear they are pushing for a much lower-level, closer-to-hardware approach for future graphics programming solutions. These changes can be credited to the drastic improvements we’ve seen in graphics processors over the last 5 years. It will take a significant amount of time for these API’s to become industry standard. The goal of this research is to verify the value and benefits of developing with these API’s as opposed to using the current industry standard OpenGL or DirectX 11. Several GPU & CPU benchmark performance tests have brought interesting results. Furthermore, many advanced computer graphical techniques and algorithms which are implemented using C++ and Vulkan, help to shine a spotlight on the glaring contrast between Vulkan and OpenGL. This research attempts to be one of the first validations for advantages or disadvantages the Vulkan API offers in comparison to its predecessors