1# Vulkan Ecosystem Components
2*Version 1.0, January 25, 2016*
3
4This project provides Khronos offical ICD loader and validation layers for Vulkan developers on Windows and Linux.
5
6## Introduction
7
8Vulkan is an Explicit API, enabling direct control over how GPUs actually work. No (or very little) validation
9or error checking is done inside a Vulkan driver. Applications have full control and responsibility. Any errors in
10how Vulkan is used often result in a crash. This project provides standard validation layers that can be enabled to ease development by
11helping developers verify their applications correctly use the Vulkan API.
12
13Vulkan supports multiple GPUs and multiple global contexts (VkInstance). The ICD loader is necessary to support multiple GPUs  and the VkInstance level Vulkan commands.  Additionally, the loader manages inserting Vulkan layer libraries,
14including validation layers between the application and the ICD.
15
16The following components are available in this repository:
17- Vulkan header files
18- [*ICD Loader*](loader/)
19- [*Validation Layers*](layers/)
20- Demos and tests for the loader and validation layers
21
22
23## How to Build and Run
24
25[BUILD.md](BUILD.md)
26includes directions for building all the components, running the validation tests and running the demo applications.
27
28Information on how to enable the various Validation layers is in
29[layers/README.md](layers/README.md).
30
31Architecture and interface information for the loader is in
32[loader/LoaderAndLayerInterface.md](loader/LoaderAndLayerInterface.md).
33
34## License
35This work is released as open source under a MIT-style license from Khronos including a Khronos copyright.
36
37See LICENSE.txt for a full list of licenses used in this repository.
38
39## Acknowledgements
40While this project has been developed primarily by LunarG, Inc; there are many other
41companies and individuals making this possible: Valve Corporation, funding
42project development; Google providing significant contributions to the validation layers;
43Khronos providing oversight and hosting of the project.
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