Tag Archives: API

NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER Vulkan Performance Examined!

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Here is a quick look at the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER‘s performance with the Vulkan API! Find out whether you should use Vulkan or DirectX in your games!

 

Vulkan API Primer

Build upon the AMD Mantle API, Vulkan is a cross-platform 3D graphics API. Designed to offer low driver overhead, it promises to offer these benefits :

  • reduced CPU overhead, with better management of CPU workloads
  • support for multi-threaded processing, allowing for better scaling on multi-core CPUs
  • close-to-metal control, for better performance and image quality
  • cross-platform support across Windows, Linux, macOS

NVIDIA supports Vulkan in their Game Ready drivers, for their graphics cards based on the Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta and Turing microarchitectures.

 

NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER Vulkan Performance

In our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER review, we used the Vulkan API where possible. But what’s the performance impact? Let’s take a look…

World War Z

Based on the 2013 movie, World War Z is a relatively new third-person shooter game, released in April 2019.

We tested it on three resolutions using the Vulkan and DirectX 11 APIs at the Ultra High settings :

The performance gap is HUGE! The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER running on Vulkan was much, MUCH faster than DirectX 11 :

  • 1080p : Vulkan was 42% faster than DirectX 11
  • 1440p : Vulkan was 60% faster than DirectX 11
  • 2160p : Vulkan was 66% faster than DirectX 11

Notably, Vulkan enabled the RTX 2060 SUPER to deliver an average frame rate in excess of 80 fps at the 4K resolution.

Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade is a third-person shooter game, released in August 2018. We tested it on three resolutions using the Vulkan and DirectX 12 APIs at the Ultra High settings :

DirectX 12 is closer-to-the-metal than DirectX 11, reducing driver overhead. So the performance impact of using the Vulkan API for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER was much less pronounced.

  • 1080p : Vulkan was 7.5% faster than DirectX 12
  • 1440p : Vulkan was 6.5% faster than DirectX 12
  • 2160p : Vulkan was 6.6% faster than DirectX 12

Strange Brigade Frame Time Analysis

Strange Brigade also gives us the minimum, maximum and average frame times, allowing us to compare the frame times for both Vulkan and DirectX 12.

Generally, using Vulkan reduced frame times. The only exception was at 1080p, where its maximum frame time was higher than DirectX 12 :

  • 1080p : Vulkan had 7.4% lower average frame time than DirectX 12
  • 1440p : Vulkan had 6.5% lower average frame time than DirectX 12
  • 2160p : Vulkan had 5.8% lower average frame time than DirectX 12

 

RTX 2060 SUPER Vulkan Performance Summarised

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The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is a great 1440p gaming platform, but with some help from the Vulkan API, it can make 4K gaming possible.

You will see a much greater performance boost switching from DirectX 11 to Vulkan, as we saw in the case of World War Z.

There is a much smaller, but still significant, performance boost going from DirectX 12 to Vulkan.

 

Recommended Reading

Go Back To > Computer Hardware | Home

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Acronis Cyber Platform APIs Are Finally Open After 16 Years!

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Great news for developers and software companies! The Acronis Cyber Platform APIs are finally open after 16 years!

Here is a primer on what it means for software developers and users worldwide.

 

Who Is Acronis?

Acronis was spun-off SWsoft in 2001, with a focus on backup and data protection software and services. They have since launched anti-ransomware solutions, helping to blunt the highly-debilitating threat.

Last year, Acronis claimed to have stopped over 400,000 ransomware attacks, which they estimated to be worth more than $208 million in damages. That’s an average of $522 per attack!

 

Acronis Cyber Platform APIs Goes Open

Like many software companies, Acronis derives some revenue from providing access to their APIs. Even their partners would require special permission and fees to connect their software to the Acronis Cyber Platform.

After 16 years of doing this, Acronis has finally realised that it would benefit them more to open up their APIs.

By opening up their APIs, Acronis hopes to encourage more software companies to integrate their software with the Acronis Cyber Platform, instead of a competing, rival platform.

 

Opening Up Will Expand The Acronis Cyber Platform

Acronis claims they are taking a chance on the company’s future by opening up their APIs. But the days of milking proprietary APIs for revenue is fast vanishing, especially when it comes to cybersecurity companies.

Acronis may boast 5 million end users, and nearly 50,000 channel partners, but that may erode as their competitors offer easier and cheaper (if not FREE) ways for ISVs, OEMS and service providers to integrate their software.

The decision to open up the APIs should make the Acronis Cyber Platform more attractive, and expand the platform’s reach.

Recommended Reading

Go Back To > Cybersecurity | Home

 

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Vulkan Support For DOOM Now Available

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Today, id Software announced the availability for the Vulkan version of DOOM that relies on innovative features to deliver incredible performance.

As many of you already know, the Vulkan API is a descendant of AMD’s Mantle that supports close-to-metal control across Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Linux. Compared to OpenGL, Vulkan substantially reduces “API overhead” – the background work a CPU does to interpret what a game asks of the hardware – to deliver meaningful features, performance, and image quality and expose GPU hardware features that wouldn’t ordinarily be accessible through OpenGL

 

DOOM

DOOM benefits from Vulkan support by using several great features:

  • Asynchronous Shaders: Using multiple command processors — the Asynchronous Compute Engines in AMD’s Graphics Core Next and Polaris GPU architectures — each queue can submit commands without waiting for other tasks to complete.
  • Shader Intrinsics or Shader Intrinsic Functions, also called built-in functions, provide a way for game developers to directly access graphics hardware instructions in situations where those instructions would normally be abstracted by an API. This approach has been used successfully on gaming consoles to extract more performance from the GPU — and now AMD is enabling PCs with the same capability.
  • Frame Flip Optimizations which basically pass the frame directly to the display once it’s ready, i.e. skips the copy and save.

As Robert Duffy, Chief Technical Officer of id software pointed out at the AMD event at Computex 2016, “Vulkan is a modern API, with roots to AMD’s Mantle technology, and it provides real benefits to both us as developers and the large community of gamers using a wide range of hardware. When you factor in additional AMD features, like true Asynchronous Compute, custom intrinsic instructions, and combine those with a raw speed of idTech 6, we believe the experience on AMD will be hard to beat.”

 

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Faster Performance

Performance numbers produced by AMD internal testing show the performance benefits of Vulkan versus OpenGL implementation:

 

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Free LINE BOT API Trial Accounts Announced

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April 7, 2016 – LINE Corporation today announced the start of free provision for BOT API Trial Accounts ahead of its plans to open up access to its messaging API later in the year.

At the “LINE Conference Tokyo 2016” held on March 24, LINE shared plans for the strategic opening of the business platform on its communication app in order to enhance the wide variety of services provided by businesses over LINE to be more convenient, easier and fun for users.

As one part of this strategy, LINE will open up access to its messaging API to deepen real-time communication between users and companies and encourage the development of all kinds of new LINE accounts.

Starting today, LINE will begin distributing 10,000 free BOT API Trial Accounts to third-party developers worldwide on a first-come-first-served basis. Additionally, LINE has just launched its new business portal site for managing LINE@ and LINE Login settings today, called LINE Business Center, where interested parties can register for the free trial via the site to begin creating their BOT accounts.

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BOT API Trial Account holders will be able to link the systems and services developed by themselves or their company with a LINE account and create a BOT account that can send and receive API-driven messages.

Whether it’s synching with restaurant search or scheduling apps to provide notifications or issue coupons, or to synching with smart appliances and other hardware to make them operable via LINE, the creation and implementation of various accounts based on CRM and IoT concepts will give LINE users access to services and features that have never been available previously on LINE .

 

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AMD Vulkan API-Enabled Radeon Beta Driver Launched

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AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) is excited about the imminent release of the ratified Vulkan 1.0 Specification by the Khronos Group. We started this journey in June of 2014 when AMD submitted the XGL proposal based on our work on Mantle. Once accepted by the OpenGL Next working group, AMD helped steward it through committee via our role as spec editors.

With this transition to public availability of the Vulkan 1.0 API specifications, AMD will be releasing a beta version of our Vulkan API-enabled Radeon Software driver. This new driver, in-concert with Radeon graphics hardware, enables PC game developers to remove historical software bottlenecks which will unleash new, rich visual gaming experiences.

 

What Is AMD Vulkan?

As a complement to OpenGL, descended from AMD’s Mantle, and forged by the industry, AMD Vulkan is a powerful low-overhead graphics API that gives software developers deep control over the performance, efficiency, and capabilities of Radeon GPUs and multi-core CPUs.

Compared to OpenGL, AMD Vulkan substantially reduces API overhead, which is background work a GPU or CPU must do to interpret what a game is asking of the hardware. Reducing this overhead gives hardware much more time to spend on delivering meaningful features, performance, and image quality. AMD Vulkan API also exposes GPU hardware features not ordinarily accessible through OpenGL, and uniquely supports Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Android, and Linux.

With the consortium of hardware and software companies that make up the Khronos Group, AMD is looking forward to the delivering the latest and greatest game rendering technologies to millions of users and many operating systems simultaneously:

“The release of the Vulkan 1.0 specification is a huge step forward for developers. The AMD Vulkan API, which was derived from Mantle, will bring the benefits of low-overhead high-performance Graphics API to the benefit of cross-platform and cross-vendor targeted applications,“ said Raja Koduri, Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. “The promotion of open and scalable technologies continues to be the focus at AMD, as a pioneer in the low-overhead API space. As a member of the Khronos Group, AMD is proud to collaborate with hardware and software industry leaders to develop the AMD Vulkan API to ignite the next evolution in PC game development.”

 

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