14 DAY TRIAL // After demoing Linux and Steam running on PlayStation 4 with firmware 4.05 at 33C3 last year, Hector Martin of the fail0verflow team just dropped the big news earlier today that Vulkan runs on PS4.
For now, there's just a screenshot and, as shown in the tweet attached below, PlayStation 4 runs Vulkan with the Linux 4.10 RC2 kernel and AMD's proprietary AMDGPU-PRO 16.50 graphics driver for Linux-based operating systems. It also shows us the powerful Dolphin GameCube and Wii emulator and the standard Vulkan demos.
Vulkan is currently the next generation graphics API (Application Programming Interface) designed to offer high-efficiency access to modern graphics processing units (GPUs) across major platforms like Linux and Windows. Someday, it might just become the OpenGL alternative we dreamed of for so long.
According to Hector Martin, Vulkan didn't work properly on PlayStation 4 until now because of its old and broken GPU firmware. When asked by a user what was the issue, the developer replied "PS4 GPU firmware was too old and broken. Turns out it runs fine with the Bonaire firmware though (after adjusting the size)."
With that out of the way, there's nothing stopping anyone to transform its PlayStation 4 gaming console into a veritable Steam Machine unit for playing games, powered by a Linux-based operating system, of course. Hector Martin currently proudly runs Gentoo Linux with the lightweight Xfce desktop on his PS4.
It's official: The PS4 runs Vulkan. PS4 Linux 4.10-rc2, AMDGPU-PRO 16.50, Dolphin and the Vulkan demos. pic.twitter.com/R68y2nZKPS — Hector Martin (@marcan42) January 6, 2017