[HelloNurse]

It is unreasonable to expect to run the same graphics code on desktop GPUs and mobile ones: mobile applications have to render something less expensive that doesn't exceed the limited capabilities of a low-power device with slow memory.

The different, separate engine variants for mobile and desktop users, on the other hand, can be based on the same graphics API; they'll just use different features from it in addition to having different algorithms and architecture.

[flohofwoe]

> they'll just use different features from it in addition to having different algorithms and architecture.

...so you'll have different code paths for desktop and mobile anyway. The same can be achieved with a Vulkan vs VulkanES split which would overlap for maybe 50..70% of the core API, but significantly differ in the rest (like resource binding).

[kllrnohj]

But they don't actually differ, see the "no graphics API" blog post we're all commenting on :) The primary difference between mobile & desktop is performance, not feature set (ignoring for a minute the problem of outdated drivers).

And beyond that if you look at historical trends, mobile is and always has been just "desktop from 5-7 years ago". An API split that makes sense now will stop making sense rather quickly.

[m-schuetz]

Different features/architecture is precisely the issue with mobile, be it due to hardware constraints or due to lack in deiver support. Render passes were only bolted into Vulkan because of mobile tiler GPUs, they never made any sense for desktop GPUs and only made Vulkan worse for desktop graphics development.

And this is the reason why mobile and desktop should be separate graphics APIs. Mobile is holding desktop back not just feature wise, it also fucks up the API.