# Chapter 31. Features, Limits, and Formats

Vulkan is designed to support a wide range of hardware and as such there are a number of features, limits, and formats which are not supported on all hardware. Features describe functionality that is not required and which must be explicitly enabled. Limits describe implementation-dependent minimums, maximums, and other device characteristics that an application may need to be aware of. Supported buffer and image formats may vary across implementations. A minimum set of format features are guaranteed, but others must be explicitly queried before use to ensure they are supported by the implementation.

| Note on extensibility
The features and limits are reported via basic structures (that is `VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures` and `VkPhysicalDeviceLimits`). It is expected that when new features or limits are added in a future Vulkan version, new structure(s) and entry point(s) will be added as necessary to query these. New functionality added by extensions is not expected to modify the core feature and limit structures.