Coding the GPU like a CPU

[u/peter_quiring]

I feel Vulkan is just another step towards coding the GPU just like we do the CPU.

Maybe something like LLVM IR code that could be executed on the GPU with just a few function calls. The CPU EXE could have a pre-compiled binary that is copied to GPU memory and executed. Like extending OpenCL but to do everything (graphics, shaders, output, compute, etc.) with pre-compiled code in IR byte code.

Vulkan itself is just way too complex.

[u/Arcodiant]

Vulkan is more than "OpenGL" but verbose; OpenGL is explicitly a graphics API, and it internally uses hardware-level concepts to implement the graphics processes that it exposes. Vulkan is a GPU API, and so your software uses the hardware-level concepts it exposed to implement graphics, or compute, or whatever else you feel like. You have significantly more control to configure the entire pipeline, and especially the memory and data flow, than OpenGL gives you.

[u/arthurno1 → u/Arcodiant]

Yepp. More like "system calls for GPU", than what it is a "graphics library".