Vulkan 1.2.184 Includes NVIDIA Extension For RDMA Usage

Last year I wrote about NVIDIA working on Vulkan support for RDMA memory. That work around RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) memory usage in the Vulkan context is now available with today's Vulkan 1.2.184 specification update.

While RDMA is used for zero-copy networking with high throughput and low latency, it's usually more associated with cluster computing and heavy data center needs rather than for working with a graphics API. However, NVIDIA has been preparing such and the new VK_NV_external_memory_rdma extension has arrived with this week's Vulkan spec update.

VK_NV_external_memory_rdma allows for allocating memory within a Vulkan context that can be used for remote direct memory access from other devices. VK_NV_external_memory_rdma is what was referenced last year as their work-in-progress extension at the time of "VK_NV_rdma_memory".

The full spec details and example source usage of VK_NV_external_memory_rdma can be found via the public spec. The new Vulkan 1.2.184 spec update can be viewed at Vulkan.org.