The maker of smartphone SoCs Qualcomm has announced that its Adreno 530 GPU supports the just announced API Vulkan. The Adreno 530 GPU is integrated in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC and will power many upcoming smartphones.
Vulkan is the latest API to come our way – announced in year 2015 and published a few days ago Vulkan tries to compete with DirectX 12. Although tests suggest that Vulkan is definitely slower than DirectX 12, the API might have a bright future since more polishing work is needed. Vulkan allows applications to have direct access to the GPU, which lessens the burden on the graphics driver and makes the driver simpler. Moreover Vulkan can also be used in GPU-intensive calculations and runs on numerous devices and platforms such as smartphones (as seen from Adreno 530), gaming consoles, personal computers and others.
Qualcomm says that Adreno 4xx and other Adreno 5xx GPUs will also support Vulkan in the near future.
Source: Qualcomm