KosmicKrisp passes the Vulkan 1.4 conformance test suite on Apple silicon

Sources: primary, discussion
Summary: LunarG states that KosmicKrisp, an MIT-licensed Mesa driver that emits Metal Shading Language through NIR and encodes to Metal 4, passed the Khronos conformance test suite for Vulkan 1.4 on Apple silicon, and that performance has tripled since 1.3 conformance. It requires M1 or later and macOS 26 or later, so MoltenVK stays the path for Intel Macs and older releases, and mixed fleets still have to pick the ICD at runtime. iOS is not enabled in this release, with LunarG stating the conformance test suite was not fully passing and that it is not resourced to support iOS alongside macOS, and LunarG states the conformant driver will be available in the Vulkan SDK releasing 2026-09-29.
Why it matters: A conformant Vulkan 1.4 implementation on macOS lets an engine keep one Vulkan path across Windows, Linux and Apple silicon instead of a separate Metal path, and gives validation layers, capture and replay, and diagnostics a conformant ICD to target on the Mac.