Vulkan shifted work traditionally hidden inside graphics drivers into explicit application control over command buffers, memory, synchronization, queues, and pipelines, trading convenience for predictable low-overhead GPU access.
WebGL brought a shader-based OpenGL ES graphics context into the HTML canvas, letting web pages use the GPU for interactive 3D without browser plug-ins or native installation.
SYCL brought host code and accelerator kernels into a single standard C++ source model, evolving from an OpenCL-oriented abstraction into a multivendor programming standard for CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and other accelerators.
OpenCL emerged in 2008 as an open, royalty-free standard for programming CPUs, GPUs and other parallel processors through one cross-platform execution and memory model.
OpenGL turned Silicon Graphics' workstation graphics lineage into a formally specified, multi-vendor API that let applications target accelerated 3D hardware across platforms.