Firefox Merges Support For Vulkan Video Decoding
(Monday June 08, 2026 @05:00PM (BeauHD)
from the exciting-developments dept.)
- Reference: 0183662274
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/08/1630210/firefox-merges-support-for-vulkan-video-decoding
- Source link:
Firefox has [1]merged initial support for Vulkan Video decoding , giving the browser a more cross-platform path for GPU-accelerated video playback beyond Linux's long-running reliance on VA-API. Phoronix reports:
> Firefox on Linux has long been focused on the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) that isn't universally supported by Linux graphics drivers. This has left to efforts like NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver to layer VA-API atop NVIDIA NVDEC interfaces to enjoy GPU-accelerated video playback in Firefox. Smaller Arm/embedded graphics drivers also have been largely left out of the game in the VA-API space. But with Vulkan Video we are beginning to see more adoption and in a cross-platform manner.
>
> [...] The Firefox 153 release due out in July will have Vulkan Video decoding support available. The [2]Vulkan Video activity in Firefox Git culminated this week with the work of NVIDIA engineer Tymur Boiko and Red Hat's Martin Stransky. Firefox 153.0 is expected for release on 21 July with this Vulkan Video support assuming no last minute issues.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Vulkan-Video-Merged
[2] https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amozilla-firefox%2Ffirefox+Vulkan+Video&type=commits&s=author-date&o=desc
> Firefox on Linux has long been focused on the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) that isn't universally supported by Linux graphics drivers. This has left to efforts like NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver to layer VA-API atop NVIDIA NVDEC interfaces to enjoy GPU-accelerated video playback in Firefox. Smaller Arm/embedded graphics drivers also have been largely left out of the game in the VA-API space. But with Vulkan Video we are beginning to see more adoption and in a cross-platform manner.
>
> [...] The Firefox 153 release due out in July will have Vulkan Video decoding support available. The [2]Vulkan Video activity in Firefox Git culminated this week with the work of NVIDIA engineer Tymur Boiko and Red Hat's Martin Stransky. Firefox 153.0 is expected for release on 21 July with this Vulkan Video support assuming no last minute issues.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Vulkan-Video-Merged
[2] https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amozilla-firefox%2Ffirefox+Vulkan+Video&type=commits&s=author-date&o=desc
THIS is what we want from Mozilla/Firefox!! (Score:2)
by denis-The-menace ( 471988 )
This, the PDF handling and the screenshot features is what I want to see from Firefox.
It's actually cross-platform and cross-API compat (Score:5, Informative)
Vulkan is friendly to both X11 (x11vk) and Wayland (waylandvk). It works on Linux (with Mesa or proprietary drivers), Windows, and elsewhere, regardless of the underlying display protocol. Thank you, Khronos for side stepping that quagmire.
No. (Score:3)
It is not cross-API compatible because it is an API. It's implemented on multiple platforms and it's only supported on platforms it's implemented for.
Also, you seem to be forgetting there are a lot of API specific functions functions: e.g. vkCreateWaylandSurfaceKHR, vkCreateWin32SurfaceKHR, vkCreateXcbSurfaceKHR, vkCreateXlibSurfaceKHR.
Re: (Score:3)
> It is not cross-API compatible because it is an API.
While that's technically true, what I'm asserting is that it's being used by other API's (various game and GL libraries) across platforms in a way that actually works.
> you seem to be forgetting there are a lot of API specific functions functions
There are only a handful of ways to implement something like Vulkan across so many different display strategies. Frankly, I think they've adopted the most sane and straightforward solution: do first class support for all of them as best you can and abstract those behind your API. If Khronos were selling Wayland or X11, they'd be stuck in the s