Vulkan Graphics and Compute for the Safety-Critical Industry

Vulkan SC is a streamlined, deterministic and robust API based on Vulkan 1.2 that enables state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated graphics and computation to be deployed in safety-critical systems that are certified to meet industry functional safety standards.

The Essential Resources for Vulkan SC Development

Specification & Key Resources

Thanks to the support of the Khronos membership and our passionate developer community, there is a full set of well-supported developer information and educational resources available to help you get you up and running with your Vulkan SC application development.

Specification (PDF, HTML)
Headers - Official API headers and combined header generation tooling.
Utility Libraries - utilities used by the ecosystem components that are also available for application use.
Loader - ICD loader, documentation and tests (Linux, Windows and QNX).
Tools - vulkanscinfo command line tool, mock ICD, and the device simulation Layer.
Validation Layers - Verify applications are making correct use of the API.
Emulation Layer - Develop Vulkan SC application on top of Vulkan Implementation

Vendor SDKs

NVIDIA GeForce RTX and NVIDIA RTX Vulkan SC SDK version 1.0.15.
- Windows SDK | Linux SDK | README

Blogs, Releases and More ...

Featured News and Blogs

View All Vulkan SC News

Blog: Jul 2024
Behind the Scenes: the Vulkan SC Ecosystem

Blog: Mar 2023
Vulkan SC: Significant Ecosystem and Tooling Updates

Blog - Mar 2022
Vulkan SC Overview: How is it Different from the Vulkan you Already Know?

News - Mar 2022
Khronos Releases Vulkan SC 1.0 Open Standard for Safety-Critical Accelerated Graphics and Compute

Welcome to Vulkan SC

"Vulkan 1.2’s modern design for explicit control over GPU resources was the ideal foundation for building this next-generation safety-critical GPU API that provides significantly increased performance and control over graphics and compute dataflows than was possible with OpenGL SC 2.0. Vulkan SC 1.0 enables detailed design and control of device scheduling, synchronization, and resource management, making it the ideal API for developing the next generation of safety-critical graphics and compute applications targeting modern GPUs."

Mark Bellamy

Vulkan SC Working Group Chair, and Arm

Khronos API Comparisons

How Vulkan SC Differs From Vulkan

Vulkan SC is the combination of the Vulkan 1.2 functionality relevant to the safety-critical market and new market specific functionality that enhances the robustness of the specification by eliminating ignored parameters and undefined behaviors, and enables enhanced detection, reporting, and correction of run-time faults.

Streamlined: Remove non-essential runtime functionality (e.g. sparse memory, descriptor update templates and certain types of object deleters).
Deterministic: Predictable execution times and results (e.g. offline compilation of pipelines, static memory allocation and high degree of control over resource management with explicit synchronization).
Robust: Remove Ambiguity (No ignored parameters or undefined behaviors, enhanced fault handling and reporting functionality, rigorous Vulkan SC Conformance Test Suite and MISRA C alignment).

Additional information can be found in the blog post: Vulkan SC Overview - and how it is different from the Vulkan you already know.

How Vulkan SC Differs From OpenGL SC

Vulkan SC is based on Vulkan and has significantly expanded functionality from OpenGL SC. Here are some key differences:

API	API Size	Driver Profile	Shader Capability	Predictable Command Execution	Multithread Friendly	Compute
OpenGL SC	Small	Larger Driver	ESSL 2.0	No	No	No
Vulkan SC	Large	Smaller Driver	SPIR-V 1.5	Yes	Yes	Yes

OpenGL SC is based on GLES 2.0, not multithreaded friendly, and does not offer compute capabilities. Vulkan SC offers a smaller driver footprint, is multithreaded friendly, and supports compute. Vulkan SC also offers broader shader compatibility via SPIR-V, and can be authored from GLSL, HLSL, or Slang.

A Consistent Platform for Developers

Conformant Implementations

Vulkan SC Implementations

Conformant implementations of Vulkan SC are running today on the following platforms. View Vulkan SC Conformant Products for more details.

CoreAVI’s VkCore® SC graphics and compute drivers
NVIDIA DRIVE and Jetson Platforms.
- Available on all NVIDIA desktop drivers now
- Also available as part of the NVIDIA DRIVE and Jetson Platforms

Development Implementations (non Conformant)

Vulkan SC Emulation Layer on Vulkan
- Not for production use
- Good for development/prototyping evaluation

About Conformance Testing

The Vulkan SC Conformance Test Suite (CTS) is built upon the robust Vulkan CTS and provides an important tool for API implementers to exercise the completeness of their implementations. The rigorous CTS also assists system integrators to confirm specification compatibility while maximizing software portability and reuse across systems. See Implementing Vulkan SC.

Community

Join the Vulkan SC Community

Issues, Discussions and News

There are several ways to follow the latest Vulkan SC developments, provide feedback on the specification, and get your questions answered. It's a great way to get involved and will help forge the Vulkan SC community and ecosystem.

GitHub Discussions - Use to ask questions and discuss Vulkan SC related topics.
GitHub Issues - Use to provide direct feedback on the Vulkan SC specification.
Newsletter - Subscribe to the Khronos Safety-Critical Newsletter.

Help Shape the Future of Vulkan SC

If you are working with Vulkan SC and wish to get involved in helping shape its future, please consider Joining Khronos and our Working Group. Any organization is welcome to join, and multiple levels of membership are available to enable any organization, large or small, to get involved.

Quotes and Endorsements

Industry Support for Vulkan SC

“Functional safety is paramount for any autonomous system deployed in vehicles, robots, factories and beyond. Through our partnership with CoreAVI and The Khronos Group, we’re addressing the complex requirements of autonomous use cases using Arm’s first high-performance, safety-capable GPU, Mali-G78AE, and ISO26262-certified Vulkan SC drivers, Mali-G78AE VKCore. The release of Vulkan SC 1.0 marks an important milestone in enabling developers to leverage the full capabilities of safety-capable Mali GPUs and create robust code for safety-critical use cases.”

Tom Conway

Senior Director of Product Management, Automotive and IoT Line of Business, Arm

“Artificial intelligence is being brought into every aspect of our lives and in some cases safety is essential, such as for self-driving cars. At Codeplay, we believe that the future of technology should be built on open industry standards and that safety must be taken very seriously. That’s why we are leading members of the SYCL industry standard that is being used for the next generation of supercomputers and why we are also interested in using Vulkan SC compute capabilities with SYCL to support safe software development for the innovations of tomorrow.”

Andrew Richards

CEO, Codeplay

“CoreAVI is excited that our engineers have been an integral part of the creation of the new Vulkan SC API open industry standard. We believe this technology comes at the perfect time in the evolution of safety-critical systems and leads the way for the future of the new autonomous world.”

Damian Fozard

CEO, CoreAVI

“At Imagination, we are focused on delivering differentiated safety solutions, covering both GPU HW and DDK, to leading automotive manufacturers and Tier 1s. As a long-standing advocate of Khronos safety APIs we were proud to be one of the first supporters of OpenGL SC 2.0. We are committed to delivering best-in-class safety drivers, working closely with Khronos on the definition of Vulkan SC for next-generation safety-critical use cases in automotive and beyond.”

Janos Lakatos

Director of Software Engineering - DDK Safety Critical, Imagination Technologies

“Mobica is delighted to have played a key role in the development of the Vulkan® Safety-Critical (SC) 1.0 Specification and its conformance testing capabilities. We are excited to see how this royalty-free API will benefit safety critical industries from the advanced GPU graphics now available.”

Gary Butters

CRO, Mobica

“Vulkan SC will broaden the adoption of GPU acceleration in safety-critical systems and real-time applications. Vulkan SC 1.0 is a significant milestone and NVIDIA is proud to have participated in its design at Khronos. We have conformant Vulkan SC 1.0 running today on our DRIVE and Jetson platforms, which was critical to proving the API’s architecture, and we will be rolling out drivers to our developers during 2022.”

Kevin Flory

Vice President of Automotive Software, NVIDIA

“RasterGrid is the proud developer and maintainer of a large set of Vulkan SC development tools, many built based on the industry-proven tools available for Vulkan, including validation layers customized for the Vulkan SC API. Together with additional differentiating components such as the Vulkan SC Emulation driver, our goal is to provide software engineers targeting the Vulkan SC API a complete development experience on all Vulkan and/or Vulkan SC capable platforms.”

Daniel Rakos

CEO, RasterGrid

Vulkan SC API Adoption

Implementing Vulkan SC

Khronos welcomes any company creating safety-critical hardware or systems to implement and ship the Vulkan SC API. Implementors wanting to use the Vulkan SC name or logo in connection with an implementation and enjoy the protection of the Khronos Intellectual Property Framework should become a Vulkan SC Adopter. This requires passing the Conformance Tests and is independent from being a Khronos member.

Strong Safety Critical Pedigree

The Evolution of the Khronos Safety-Critical GPU API

Khronos has close to 20 years experience in adapting mainstream APIs for safety critical markets. In 2005 OpenGL SC 1.0 defined a minimal subset of OpenGL 1.3 for easier certification to the DO-178B standard for avionics displays. When OpenGL ES 2.0 introduced programmable shaders, OpenGL SC 2.0 integrated that functionality for ISO 26262 certification for automotive displays. And now Khronos has defined a safety critical subset of Vulkan to create Vulkan SC.