Vulcan is a low-level graphics API designed to provide developers with more direct control over the GPU,

reducing overhead and enabling high-performance in applications like games, simulations, and visualizations.

It addresses the inefficiencies of older APIs like OpenGL and Direct 3D, and help solve issues with cross-platform compatibility.

Tom Olson is a distinguished engineer at Arm, and Ralph Potter is the lead chrono-standards

engineer at Samsung. Tom and Ralph are also the outgoing and incoming chairs of the Vulcan

working group. They joined the podcast to talk about earlier graphics APIs, what motivated the creation

of Vulcan, modern GPUs, and more. Joe Nash is a developer, educator, and award-winning

community builder, who has worked at companies including GitHub, Twilio, Unity, and PayPal.

Joe got a start in software development by creating mods and running servers for Gary's mod.

And game development remains his favorite way to experience and explore new technologies and concepts. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?

Hi, Joe. Doing good. This is Tom Olson, by the way. Awesome. Perfect. How about you, Ralph?

Hi, Joe. Yeah, I'm doing good. Thank you for having us both.

Awesome.

So to kick us off, you know, I introduced you both there as the chairs of the Kronos Working

Group.

There's a bit more to both of your stories.

Tom, do you want to kick us off by introducing yourself and how you came to be working

on Vulcan?

Sure. So I work for ARM, which is known as a CPU company, but we do also make

GPUs, the Mali GPU family. And I've been a professional graphic standards committee chair

for the past 18 years. It's a bit horrible. I started chairing the OpenGLES standard, which some

folks may have heard of, the mobile version of OpenGL.

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