| Mark Lobodzinski | c71f3e9 | 2016-06-01 16:12:49 -0600 | [diff] [blame] | 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 | ## License |
| 40 | This work is released as open source under a Apache-style license from Khronos including a Khronos copyright. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | See COPYRIGHT.txt for a full list of licenses used in this repository. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | ## Acknowledgements |
| 45 | While this project has been developed primarily by LunarG, Inc; there are many other |
| 46 | companies and individuals making this possible: Valve Corporation, funding |
| 47 | project development; Google providing significant contributions to the validation layers; |
| 48 | Khronos providing oversight and hosting of the project. |
| 49 | |
| 50 | |