Last year LunarG announced KosmicKrisp as a new Vulkan implementation atop Apple’s Metal API. Initially targeting macOS, KosmicKrisp since was merged to Mesa and has evolved quite nicely as a modern implementation of Vulkan-on-Metal for Apple Silicon. It continues moving ahead with an eye for iOS, more performance optimizations, and completing Vulkan 1.4 support.
LunarG’s Richard S. Wright Jr presented at this month’s Vulkanised conference in San Diego. His presentation was focused on KosmicKrisp for Vulkan on Apple hardware with this effort that has been largely funded by Google for enhancing the Android Emulator on Macs. He showed the successes of KosmicKrisp on Apple hardware / macOS, the co-existence of KosmicKrisp and MoltenVK on macOS particularly for those still needing to support Intel graphics hardware (KosmicKrisp is Apple Silicon designed only), and more.
As for new information for those that have been following KosmicKrisp’s development, a roadmap was shared. Over the next quarter to half year they are going to work on tessellation/geometry support, performance optimizations, Vulkan 1.4 conformance, and shader objects and descriptor heap support. Also iOS support is to be tackled along with more debug features.
LunarG continues investing in KosmicKrisp and it looks like this year it will continue to make the Vulkan on Apple scene much brighter.
The KosmicKrisp presentation from Vulkanised 2026 is embedded above along with the PDF slide deck for those wanting to learn more.
