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Can somebody explain the graphics stack? Vulkan, OpenGL, Magma, DirectX, SDL, Metal, Mesa, ... wat? (programming.dev)

submitted 2 weeks ago by onlinepersona@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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I just read "Google Continues Working On "Magma" For Mesa Cross-Platform System Call Interface" on Phoronix and didn't get it. That made me realise my knowledge and understanding of these things is barely existent. I did write an MS paint clone on linux in C++ a really long time ago and the entire thing was with opengl (it looked like crap), but since then... nothing.

So my understanding is that the graphics card (or CPU if there's no graphics card), writes to a component which is connected to a screen and every cycle (every 1/60 seconds if 60Hz) the contents are sent or read by the screen. OpenGL provided a common interface to do so, but has been outdated since... a while and replaced by Vulkan. Then there are libraries either built on top of are parallel to OpenGL. Vulkan can be parallel or use OpenGL if that's the only one supported IIRC.
However, I'm not sure if OpenGL is implemented at the hardware level (on the graphics card), software level, or both.

Furthermore, I don't understand where Magma, Meta, and MESA come in.

Maybe my core understanding is wrong or just outdated. I can't tell. Can anybody eplain?

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[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

OpenGL is an API standard. It defines data structures, operation interfaces, and behavior.

Mesa 3D is an implementation of OpenGL. It can be used so users of OpenGL can call it to draw stuff.

Vulkan is a newer API standard. It is newer and was designed with a lot of new hardware and hardware capabilities in mind, and significantly reduced what the job of the API is supposed to do compared to OpenGL. Essentially giving API users many more opportunities to control graphics pipeline behavior for better efficiency and performance. Libraries and frameworks exist that provide more convenience and prepared setup or opinionated usage patterns on top of Vulkan.

DirectX had a similar shift with DirectX version 12, which also implemented closer-to-hardware APIs similar to Vulkan vs OpenGL.

/edit: Noteworthy are also OpenGL and Vulkan extensions. They extend the core API with additional APIs. An app can check if they are supported, and if the driver supports it, can use them.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thanks, this answers the questions I asked another commentor 😅 Now I have to ask if Mesa is an implementation of OpenGL, what is an implementation of Vulkan? Or is the reference implementation of Vulkan also called "Vulkan" ?

Edit: alright @who@feddit.org answered the question.

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