[](http://isitmaintained.com/project/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/VulkanMemoryAllocator "Average time to resolve an issue")
Memory allocation and resource (buffer and image) creation in Vulkan is difficult (comparing to older graphics APIs, like D3D11 or OpenGL) for several reasons:
- There is additional level of indirection: `VkDeviceMemory` is allocated separately from creating `VkBuffer`/`VkImage` and they must be bound together.
- Driver must be queried for supported memory heaps and memory types. Different GPU vendors provide different types of it.
- It is recommended to allocate bigger chunks of memory and assign parts of them to particular resources, as there is a limit on maximum number of memory blocks that can be allocated.
- Library keeps track of allocated memory blocks, used and unused ranges inside them, finds best matching unused ranges for new allocations, respects all the rules of alignment and buffer/image granularity.
- Thread-safety: Library is designed to be used in multithreaded code. Access to a single device memory block referred by different buffers and textures (binding, mapping) is synchronized internally. Memory mapping is reference-counted.
- Configuration: Fill optional members of `VmaAllocatorCreateInfo` structure to provide custom CPU memory allocator, pointers to Vulkan functions and other parameters.
- Customization and integration with custom engines: Predefine appropriate macros to provide your own implementation of all external facilities used by the library like assert, mutex, atomic.
- Support for memory mapping, reference-counted internally. Support for persistently mapped memory: Just allocate with appropriate flag and access the pointer to already mapped memory.
- Linear allocator: Create a pool with linear algorithm and use it for much faster allocations and deallocations in free-at-once, stack, double stack, or ring buffer fashion.
- VK_KHR_buffer_device_address: Flag `VK_MEMORY_ALLOCATE_DEVICE_ADDRESS_BIT_KHR` is automatically added to memory allocations where needed.
- VK_EXT_memory_budget: Used internally if available to query for current usage and budget. If not available, it falls back to an estimation based on memory heap sizes.
- VK_EXT_memory_priority: Set `priority` of allocations or custom pools and it will be set automatically using this extension.
- Statistics: Obtain brief or detailed statistics about the amount of memory used, unused, number of allocated blocks, number of allocations etc. - globally, per memory heap, and per memory type.
- Debug annotations: Associate custom `void* pUserData` and debug `char* pName` with each allocation.
- JSON dump: Obtain a string in JSON format with detailed map of internal state, including list of allocations, their string names, and gaps between them.
- Debugging incorrect memory usage: Enable initialization of all allocated memory with a bit pattern to detect usage of uninitialized or freed memory. Enable validation of a magic number after every allocation to detect out-of-bounds memory corruption.
- Self-contained C++ library in single header file. No external dependencies other than standard C and C++ library and of course Vulkan. Some features of C++14 used. STL containers, RTTI, or C++ exceptions are not used.
- Platform-independent, but developed and tested on Windows using Visual Studio. Continuous integration setup for Windows and Linux. Used also on Android, MacOS, and other platforms.
Basic usage of this library is very simple. Advanced features are optional. After you created global `VmaAllocator` object, a complete code needed to create a buffer may look like this:
On Windows it is recommended to use [CMake UI](https://cmake.org/runningcmake/). Alternatively you can generate a Visual Studio project map using CMake in command line: `cmake -B./build/ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 ./`
The release comes with precompiled binary executable for "VulkanSample" application which contains test suite. It is compiled using Visual Studio 2019, so it requires appropriate libraries to work, including "MSVCP140.dll", "VCRUNTIME140.dll", "VCRUNTIME140_1.dll". If the launch fails with error message telling about those files missing, please download and install [Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads), "x64" version.
- **[Filament](https://github.com/google/filament)** - physically based rendering engine for Android, Windows, Linux and macOS, from Google. Apache License 2.0.
[Many other projects on GitHub](https://github.com/search?q=AMD_VULKAN_MEMORY_ALLOCATOR_H&type=Code) and some game development studios that use Vulkan in their games.
- **[vma_sample_sdl](https://github.com/rextimmy/vma_sample_sdl)** - SDL port of the sample app of this library (with the goal of running it on multiple platforms, including MacOS). Author: @rextimmy. License: MIT.
- **[vulkan-malloc](https://github.com/dylanede/vulkan-malloc)** - Vulkan memory allocation library for Rust. Based on version 1 of this library. Author: Dylan Ede (@dylanede). License: MIT / Apache 2.0.
