Introduced back in August of 2024 with Vulkan 1.3.294 was VK_KHR_pipeline_binary as a pipeline binary extension to retrieve binary data associated with individual pipelines. The focus of this is to bypass the Vulkan pipeline caching mechanism and so applications can manage caches themselves. Finally today for Mesa 26.0-devel the Intel “ANV” open-source Vulkan driver has enabled this extension.

VK_KHR_pipeline_binary allows games/apps to manage caching Vulkan pipeline binary data itself for more efficient cache handling. As soon as the VK_KHR_pipeline_binary extension was made public the Radeon “RADV” Mesa Vulkan driver merge request was opened and it merged days later. More than a year later, the Intel ANV Vulkan driver has joined the party.

The VK_KHR_popeline_binary extension is further detailed on the Khronos blog for explicit control over pipeline caching.

This merge request opened two months ago by Intel engineer Lionel Landwerlin is what was merged today for landing the pipeline binary extension support.

This also includes common Mesa Vulkan Runtime work around VK_KHR_pipeline_binary. In turn with that infrastructure in place, one of the patches pulled into this ANV-focused merge request is also enabling the extension for NVK as the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver.

Look for this VK_KHR_pipeline_binary support in the Intel ANV and NVIDIA NVK drivers next quarter with Mesa 26.0 for those not riding Mesa Git.