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Vulkan

Codeplay's compute only implementation of the Vulkan API.

The Vulkan specification comes in both html and pdf form, this is the canonical reference text for the standard. Portions of the Vulkan specification target graphics, this driver does not attempt to implement these features, only the compute portions of the specification are targeted.

The open source Vulkan-CTS repository contains the Conformance Test Suite (CTS), it is necessary to pass these tests in order to state that a driver conforms to the Vulkan specification. At the time of writing the CTS does not cover compute only implementations.

Dependencies

The Vulkan SDK is the only required build dependency beyond those required for the oneAPI Construction Kit as a whole. Ensure it is installed on your system.

On Linux pre-built binaries for some tools are not supplied with the tarball distribution or older Ubuntu packages of the SDK and must be compiled by the user. Ensure that the build_tools.sh script has been invoked to build the tools. In addition, ensure that the setup-env.sh script has been sourced before configuring the CMake build directory to make sure that Vulkan support is enabled.

Building

Vulkan support is enabled when:

  • If the VULKAN_SDK environment variable is set and points to a valid Vulkan SDK install, see dependencies. The installation of newer Vulkan SDK for Ubuntu packages does not require the VULKAN_SDK environment variable to be set as CMake will automatically find the SDK in the standard system directories.
  • CA_ENABLE_API CMake variable is an empty string "" or contains "vk"

spirv-ll

As specified in Appendix A of the spec an implementation must consume SPIR-V supporting the GLSL extended instruction set. oneAPI Construction Kit uses [LLVM][llvm] so spirv-ll provides a SPIR-V to LLVM-IR translator to implement SPIR-V consumption.

Generation

SPIR-V provides machine readable descriptions of the instructions in the core spec and extended specs. spirv-ll takes advantage of these JSON files to generate C++ source to enable working with SPIR-V binary data. These C++ files are generated using the following Python scripts:

  • generate_builder_calls_inc.py generates spv_builder_calls.inc.h, update and run this every time a new set of extended instructions are added
  • generate_glsl_builder_calls_cpp.py generates spv_glsl_builder_calls.cpp, update and run this every time a new GLSL function is implemented in Abacus
  • generate_spirv_opcode_h.py - used to generate spv_opcodes.h header file, update and run this every time a new set of extended instructions are added
  • generate_spirv_opcode_cpp.py generates spv_opcodes.cpp, update and run this every time a new set of extended instructions are added.

It is only required to use these generation scripts when the SPIR-V standard releases a new version which oneAPI Construction Kit must support or if the spirv-ll API is to be changed.

Optimization

This section is intended to document any areas of note for either future performance optimization or for writing optimization guides.

  • The command buffer usage flag VK_COMMAND_BUFFER_USAGE_SIMULTANEOUS_USE_BIT should be avoided by users and its implementation revisited when mux is better equipped to accommodate the functionality it represents. Currently instead of true simultaneous use command buffers are copied in their entirety when simultaneous use is required and the copy is then used simultaneously.