README.md
1 # Vulkan Ecosystem Components 2 3 This project provides Khronos official ICD loader and validation layers for Vulkan developers on Windows and Linux. 4 5 ## Introduction 6 7 Vulkan is an Explicit API, enabling direct control over how GPUs actually work. No (or very little) validation 8 or error checking is done inside a Vulkan driver. Applications have full control and responsibility. Any errors in 9 how Vulkan is used often result in a crash. This project provides standard validation layers that can be enabled 10 to ease development by helping developers verify their applications correctly use the Vulkan API. 11 12 Vulkan supports multiple GPUs and multiple global contexts (VkInstance). The ICD loader is necessary to 13 support multiple GPUs and the VkInstance level Vulkan commands. Additionally, the loader manages inserting 14 Vulkan layer libraries, including validation layers between the application and the ICD. 15 16 The following components are available in this repository: 17 - Vulkan header files 18 - [*ICD Loader*](loader/) 19 - [*Validation Layers*](layers/) 20 - Demos and tests for the loader and validation layers 21 22 ## Contributing 23 24 If you intend to contribute, the preferred work flow is for you to develop your contribution 25 in a fork of this repo in your GitHub account and then submit a pull request. 26 Please see the [CONTRIBUTING](CONTRIBUTING.md) file in this respository for more details 27 28 ## How to Build and Run 29 30 [BUILD.md](BUILD.md) 31 includes directions for building all the components, running the validation tests and running the demo applications. 32 33 Information on how to enable the various Validation layers is in 34 [layers/README.md](layers/README.md). 35 36 Architecture and interface information for the loader is in 37 [loader/LoaderAndLayerInterface.md](loader/LoaderAndLayerInterface.md). 38 39 #### **NOTE**: Update Nvidia Drivers 40 - A recent glslang change exposed a bug in the texel fetch behavior on Nvidia devices under certain situations. 41 - Previously, we reverted the glslang change which exposed it. 42 - Nvidia has since resolved the issue, and we are now removing the workaround. 43 - Driver installs with the fix are available on their download page, just look for: 44 - Linux Drivers starting with version 367.35 45 - Windows Drivers starting at version 372.54 46 47 ## License 48 This work is released as open source under a Apache-style license from Khronos including a Khronos copyright. 49 50 See COPYRIGHT.txt for a full list of licenses used in this repository. 51 52 ## Acknowledgements 53 While this project has been developed primarily by LunarG, Inc; there are many other 54 companies and individuals making this possible: Valve Corporation, funding 55 project development; Google providing significant contributions to the validation layers; 56 Khronos providing oversight and hosting of the project. 57 58 59
