Vulkan will have multi-GPU support on Windows 7 & 8, after all.

This is good news for people interested in the Vulkan API, and in competition generally, at least when it comes to gaming.

From Dark Side Of Gaming:

Last week, we informed you about Vulkan support multiple GPUs only in Windows 10. Well, it appears that won’t be the case as the Khronos Group has announced that Vulkan will also support multi-GPUs in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (as well as in Linux).

As the Khronos Group claimed:

“The good news is that the Vulkan multi-GPU specification is very definitely NOT tied to Windows 10. It is possible to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension on any desktop OS including Windows 7, 8.X and 10 and Linux.”

The Khronos Group has also commented on its GDC 2017 slides that, obviously, mislead us.

“Some of the Khronos GDC presentations mentioned that for Vulkan multi-GPU functionality, Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) must be in Linked Display Adapter (LDA) mode. That was not a very clear statement that has caused some confusion. And so it is worth clarifying that:

1. The use of WDDM is referring to the use of Vulkan multi-GPU functionality on Windows. On other OS, WDDM is not necessary to implement the Vulkan multi-GPU extension.
2. On Windows, the use of LDA mode can make implementing Vulkan multi-GPU functionality easier, and will probably be used by most implementations, but it is not strictly necessary.
3. If an implementation on Windows does decide to use LDA mode, it is NOT tied to Windows 10. LDA mode has been available on many versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and 8.X.”

I don't know what happened here -- whether Kronos Group's previous communication on this was just unclear, or just so unpopular that they decided to reverse course on this one -- but either way, this is a positive development for Vulkan. And more competition is likely to be a good thing for gamers, too, especially those wanting to game with Linux, or with Linux-like platforms like MacOS/iOS, Orbis/PS4, and Android.