Vulkan

Vulkan (German for "volcano") is a low-overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. In contrast to the older OpenGL and Direct3D 11 APIs, Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more balanced CPU and GPU usage. It provides a considerably lower-level API and parallel tasking for the application, comparable to Metal and Direct3D 12. In addition to its lower CPU usage, Vulkan is designed to allow developers to better distribute work among multiple CPU cores.