Vulkan 1.2.171 Released With New Extension For BlackBerry QNX Support

Vulkan 1.2.171 is out this morning with several fixes and clarifications to this high performance graphics / compute API specification while there is also a new extension for allowing BlackBerry QNX support.

As reported on Phoronix back in January, BlackBerry was working to bring Vulkan to QNX. That tentative extension reserved back in January, VK_QNX_screen_surface, is now formally added to the Vulkan specification.

VK_QNX_screen_surface is for supporting Vulkan surfaces on QNX, just as there are surface extensions for other platforms like the VK_KHR_wayland_surface.

BlackBerry's QNX microkernel-based, real-time operating system continues to see use in the embedded market in automobiles and other devices leveraging it for a real-time OS. QNX 7.1 is the most recent release that debuted back in July of 2020.

QNX has supported OpenGL ES usage while moving forward it looks like Vulkan support is coming to supported environments with capable hardware/drivers.

The new VK_QNX_screen_surface extension is the sole new extension of Vulkan 1.2.171. The list of changes with this extension update can be found on GitHub.