Performance Improvement Methods for Hardware Accelerated Graphics Using Vulkan API

In the present article, performance of two computer graphics application programming interfaces (APIs), OpenGL and Vulkan is compared using the application developed with C++ programming language. One of the two API’s for scene rendering can be chosen before compilation of program. OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is used to create shader for OpenGL backend. Simple shader with implementation of Phong-style shading was created in GLSL then compiled to SPIR-V language for Vulkan support. Results indicate that usage of Vulkan may double the framerate compared to OpenGL. Performance boost was achieved using pre-recorded command buffers, minimization of descriptor set count, using one vertex buffer and one index buffer per scene and using mip- maps for rendering. Framerate was captured using RenderDoc software.