OpenGL 4.6 with AZDO and Vulkan

Approaching Zero Driver Overhead (AZDO) is not a single specific OpenGL feature. It is more of a set of techniques, a software development approach with OpenGL, and a way of structuring data access and API usage to make it faster by batching a lot of draw calls together. It was originally presented by Cass Everitt, Tim Foley, John McDonald, and Graham Sellers. Many things possible with Vulkan are also possible with OpenGL/AZDO. However, Vulkan is very different to OpenGL because it can precompile the pipeline state, while in modern OpenGL, a comparable level of performance can be achieved through a completely different set of methods; for example, bindless textures and buffers, programmable vertex pulling, and combining multiple draw calls into a single one.

There is a vendor-specific OpenGL extension, NV_command_list, from NVIDIA, which can compile OpenGL commands into a command list for efficient reuse. We will not be covering it here because it...