Vulkan Setup Guide

Overview

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API developed by the Khronos Group. ailia SDK and ailia LLM can use Vulkan for GPU-accelerated inference on both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. Unlike CUDA, Vulkan is not limited to NVIDIA hardware.

Windows

On Windows, the Vulkan runtime is included with GPU drivers from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. No additional installation is required.

If you have an up-to-date GPU driver installed, Vulkan is already available on your system.

Verify Vulkan is Available

Use an ailia-models sample to check that Vulkan appears in the environment list:

cd ailia-models/image_classification/resnet50
python3 resnet50.py --env_list

If Vulkan is available, you will see an environment entry like:

env[3]=Environment(id=3, type='GPU',
name='Vulkan-NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080',
backend='Vulkan', props=[])

Tip: If Vulkan does not appear, update your GPU driver to the latest version from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel.

Linux (Ubuntu)

On Linux, the Vulkan loader library needs to be installed separately. Install it with:

sudo apt install libvulkan1

This installs the Vulkan ICD (Installable Client Driver) loader. You also need a GPU driver that includes Vulkan support.

NVIDIA GPU

If you are using an NVIDIA GPU, install the proprietary NVIDIA driver:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-560

Note: Replace 560 with the latest available driver version for your GPU. You can check available versions with apt search nvidia-driver.

AMD GPU

If you are using an AMD GPU, install the Mesa Vulkan driver:

sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers

Verify Vulkan is Available

You can verify the Vulkan installation using vulkaninfo:

sudo apt install vulkan-tools
vulkaninfo --summary

You can also verify with ailia SDK:

cd ailia-models/image_classification/resnet50
python3 resnet50.py --env_list

If Vulkan is available, you will see an environment entry with backend='Vulkan'.