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Vulkan Multi-GPU Support Not Limited to Windows 10, Also Working on Linux

Khronos sets things clear in multi-GPU support saga

Mar 23, 2017 23:31 GMT  ·  By
Vulkan remains committed to goal of making all features available cross platform
   Vulkan remains committed to goal of making all features available cross platform

The Vulkan graphics API was developed from the very beginning to be available cross-platform and thus eliminate the drawbacks caused by DirectX 12 available on Windows 10 exclusively, but recent reports indicated that availability limited to Microsoft’s latest desktop OS could also be possible.

One of the most recent rumors claimed that Vulkan could feature multi-GPU support only on Windows 10, a restriction that doesn’t make sense at all given the whole purpose of this project.

So today, Khronos Group, which maintains Vulkan, issued a detailed response to explain that multi-GPU support was not by any means supposed to be limited to Windows 10, pointing out that it can be implemented not only in older versions of Microsoft’s operating system, such as Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, but also in Linux.

Khronos goes on to point out that the confusion might have started from a recent presentation which indicated that the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) must be in Linked Display Adapter (LDA) mode for multi-GPU functionality, with this obviously limiting availability to Windows 10.

Linux implementations on their way

The company says that LDA is available on other versions of Windows, not only on Windows 10, and while this makes it easier to implement Vulkan on Windows, it’s not something that’s absolutely necessary. This means that Vulkan’s multi-GPU support can make its way to Linux as well.

“The use of WDDM is referring to the use of Vulkan multi-GPU functionality on Windows. On other OS, WDDM is not necessary to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension. On Windows, the use of LDA mode can make implementing Vulkan multi-GPU functionality easier, and will probably be used by most implementations, but it is not strictly necessary.”

Khronos ends its statement by revealing something that Linux users should really be excited about: the company is already aware of vendors working on implementing Vulkan multi-GPU in this platform, though there are already plans for similar projects on Windows 10.

More information on all these products are expected to be shared in coming months, but for the moment, this is the best news you could get: Vulkan is not in any way limited to Windows 10 and never will be.