I’ve always just clicked the box to use newest directx and now I saw a new API named Vulkan enter the market. What these software actually do with gpu to make flashy things in your monitor?
In: Technology
It’s an Application Programming Interface. Basically a list of technical specifications about how to get something done.
The real life equivalent would be a set of forms and rules about how to submit those forms. “Fill in the name here, address there, mail this to that address, attach payment for $20, expect an answer in two weeks”.
In this case it’s a bunch of technical specifications about how to get the video card to draw something for you. How to tell it “I want an object this shape, here, and with this particular texture”. How is that data encoded, how it’s sent to the card, etc.
As technology evolves so does the way to best communicate with it. Early cards had limitations that needed to be taken into account. Modern cards have better capabilities. So ways to deal with old limits aren’t needed anymore, the hardware has room for more flexibility, etc, and that means the way you talk to it is also different.
Normally we just slightly change the spec over time, but sometimes it turns out we’d be better off if we started from scratch and rethought the whole thing. Eg, we throw out the entire “mail the form to this address” system, and put up a website instead.
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