Slightly OT, but people here asked me why I think that current Vulkan and DX12 are ancient and stupid and should have been replaced with the previous console gen:
Sebbi's fresh blog post is a gem discussing this matter:
Graphics APIs and shader languages have significantly increased in complexity over the past decade. It’s time to start discussing how to strip down the abstractions to simplify development, improve performance, and prepare for future GPU workloads.
www.sebastianaaltonen.com
Takeaways:
My prototype API shows what is achievable with modern GPU architectures today, if we mix the best bits from all the latest APIs. It is possible to build an API that is simpler to use than DirectX 11 and Metal 1.0, yet it offers better performance and flexibility than DirectX 12 and Vulkan. We should embrace the modern bindless hardware.
HLSL and GLSL shading languages were designed over 20 years ago as a framework of 1:1 elementwise transform functions (vertex, pixel, geometry, hull, domain, etc). Memory access is abstracted and array handling is cumbersome as there’s no support for pointers. Despite 20 years of existence, HLSL and GLSL have failed to accumulate a library ecosystem. CUDA in contrast is a composable language exposing memory directly and new features (such as AI tensor cores) though intrinsics. CUDA has a broad library ecosystem, which has propelled Nvidia into $4T valuation. We should learn from it.
Min spec hardware
Nvidia Turing (RTX 2000 series, 2018) introduced ray-tracing, tensor cores, mesh shaders, low latency raw memory paths, bigger & faster caches, scalar unit, secondary integer pipeline and many other future looking features. Officially PCIe ReBAR support launched with RTX 3000 series, but there exists hacked Turing drivers that support it too, indicating that the hardware is capable of it. This 7 year old GPU supports everything we need. Nvidia just ended GTX 1000 series driver support in fall 2025. All currently supported Nvidia GPUs could be supported by our new API.
AMD RDNA2 (RX 6000 series, 2020) matched Nvidia’s feature set with ray-tracing and mesh shaders. One year earlier, RDNA 1 introduced coherent L2$, new L1$ level, fast L0$, generic DCC read/write paths, fastpath unfiltered loads and a modern SIMD32 architecture. PCIe ReBAR is officially supported (brand name “Smart Access Memory”). This 5 year old GPU supports everything we need. AMD ended GCN driver support already in 2021. Today RDNA 1 & RDNA 2 only receive bug fixes and security updates, RDNA 3 is the oldest GPU receiving game optimizations. All the currently supported AMD GPUs could be supported by our API.
Intel Alchemist / Xe1 (2022) were the first Intel chips with SM 6.6 global indexable heap support. These chips also support ray-tracing, mesh shaders, PCIe ReBAR (discrete) and UMA (integrated). These 3 year old Intel GPUs support everything we need.
Apple M1 / A14 (MacBook M1, iPhone 12, 2020) support Metal 4.0. Metal 4.0 guarantees GPU memory visibility to CPU (UMA on both phones and computers), and allows the user to write 64-bit pointers and 64-bit texture handles directly into GPU memory. Metal 4.0 has a new residency set API, solving a crucial usability issue with bindless resource management in the old useResource/useHeap APIs. iOS 26 still supports iPhone 11. Developers are not allowed to ship apps that require Metal 4.0 just yet. iOS 27 likely deprecates iPhone 11 support next year. On Mac, if you drop Intel Mac support, you have guaranteed Metal 4.0 support. M1-M5 = 5 generations = 5 years.
ARM Mali-G710 (2021) is ARMs first modern architecture. It introduced their new command stream frontend (CSF), reducing the CPU dependency of draw call building and adding crucial features like multi-draw indirect and compute queues. Non-uniform index texture sampling is significantly faster and the AFBC lossless compressor now supports 16-bit floating point targets. G710 supports Vulkan BDA and descriptor buffer extensions and is capable of supporting the new 2025 unified image layout extension with future drivers. The Mali-G715 (2022) introduced support for ray-tracing.
Qualcomm Adreno 650 (2019) supports Vulkan BDA, descriptor buffer and unified image layout extensions, 16-bit storage/math, dynamic rendering and extended dynamic state with the latest Turnip open source drivers. Adreno 740 (2022) introduced support for ray-tracing.
PowerVR DXT (Pixel 10, 2025) is PowerVRs first architecture that supports Vulkan descriptor buffer and buffer device address extensions. It also supports 64-bit atomics, 8-bit and 16-bit storage/math, dynamic rendering, extended dynamic state and all the other features we require.
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