According to Intel the drivers provide beta support for the Vulkan 1.0 API for 6th Generation Intel Core and related processors.

Vulkan 1.0 was introduced last month by industry consortium Khronos Group and is supposed to replace the OpenGL, which was first introduced in 1991 by Silicon Graphics. Vulkan is supposed to exploit powerful GPUs and multicore CPUs, but it is still a long way behind Direct X 12 – at least in its beta condition.

With Chipzilla’s drivers developers will be able to exploit features on Intel GPUs, like the Iris Pro, that are integrated in chips alongside CPUs. Intel's rival AMD has already released Vulkan drivers for Radeon graphics processors.

Vulkan 1.0 APIs will also work with Linux-based PCs like Steam Machines. Intel has made available open-source Vulkan drivers for Linux PCs running on chips code-named Broadwell and Skylake.