ArkGraphics 3D

ArkGraphics 3D

Developer(s)	Huawei
Initial release	August 4, 2023 (2023-08-04)
Written in	Shading language: NAPI C++/Cangjie,C, HarmonyOS Runtime/API: ArkTS, Cangjie
Operating system	HarmonyOS
Platform	64-bit ARM, RISC-V, x86, x64, Lingxi
Type	3D computer graphics and compute API
License	Proprietary

ArkGraphics 3D is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API developed by Huawei as a subset of Ark Engine. It is compared to low-level APIs on other platforms such as Apple Metal, Vulkan and DirectX 12.

Introduced in HarmonyOS NEXT 3.1 API 9 in August 2023 as a conglomerate of APIs under Ark Engine outside of Vulkan native development kit (NDK) for game development, for all types of Huawei flagship devices from Vision TVs, interactive white boards, IdeaHub, MatePad tablets, Huawei Mate/P smartphones, Huawei Watch devices and other computing devices taking advantage of Qualcomm Snapdragon and mostly Kirin chipsets, alongside custom OpenHarmony-based HarmonyOS NEXT core system iteration of the operating system as the core and primary graphics stack, of game applications written low-level. Companies such as Cocos, Unity and Unreal China support the new graphics API for HarmonyOS NEXT development on HarmonyOS.

See also

• Ark Engine
• ArkGraphics 2D
• Vulkan – main competitor of Direct3D 12
• OpenGL – main competitor of Direct3D up to version 11
• 3D computer graphics
• ANGLE (software)
• DirectDraw
• DirectX – collection of APIs in which Direct3D is implemented
• HLSL – High Level Shader Language
• Metal (API)
• Mantle (API)
• Shader
• Microsoft Silverlight
• WebGPU