More alignment examples for BDA

chapters/buffer_device_address.adoc

@@ -81,7 +81,88 @@ OpStore %ptr %obj Aligned 16
 
 Shading languages will have a default, but can allow you to align it explicitly (ex `buffer_reference_alignment`).
 
-The goal of this alignment is this is a promise for how aligned this specific pointer is. The user is responsible to confirm the address they use is aligned to it.
+The goal of this alignment is this is a promise for how aligned this specific pointer is.
+The compiler has no idea what the address will be when the shader is compiled.
+By providing an alignment it can generate valid code to match the requirement.
+The user is responsible to confirm the address they use is aligned to it.
+
+[source,glsl]
+----
+layout(buffer_reference, buffer_reference_align = 64) buffer MyBDA {
+    uint data;
+};
+
+MyBDA ptr_a; // at 0x1000
+MyBDA ptr_b; // at 0x1010
+MyBDA ptr_c; // at 0x1040
+
+ptr_a.data = 0; // (Aligned 64) valid!
+ptr_b.data = 0; // (Aligned 64) invalid!
+ptr_c.data = 0; // (Aligned 64) valid!
+----
+
+When deciding on an alignment, the minimum value will always be the size greater than or equal to the largest scalar/component type in the block.
+
+[source,glsl]
+----
+// alignment must be at least 4
+layout(buffer_reference) buffer MyBDA {
+    vec4 a; // scalar is float
+};
+
+// alignment must be at least 1
+layout(buffer_reference) buffer MyBDA {
+    uint8_t a; // scalar is 8-bit int
+};
+
+// alignment must be at least 8
+layout(buffer_reference) buffer MyBDA {
+    uint a; // 32-bit
+    double b; // 64-bit
+};
+----
+
+=== Alignment Example
+
+To help explain alignment, lets take an example of loading an array of vectors
+
+[source,glsl]
+----
+layout(buffer_reference, buffer_reference_align = ???) buffer MyBDA {
+    uvec4 data[];
+};
+
+MyBDA ptr; // at 0x1000
+ptr.data[i] = uvec4(0);
+----
+
+Here we have 2 options, we could set the `Aligned` to be `4` or `16`.
+
+If we set alignment to `16` we are letting the compiler know it can load 16 bytes at a time, so it will hopefully do a vector load/store on the memory.
+
+If we set alignment to `4` the compiler will likely have no way to infer the real alignment and will now do 4 scalar int load/store on the memory.
+
+[NOTE]
+====
+Some GPUs can do vector load/store even on unaligned addresses.
+====
+
+For the next case, if we had `uvec3` instead of `uvec4` such as
+
+[source,glsl]
+----
+layout(buffer_reference, buffer_reference_align = 4, scalar) buffer MyBDA {
+    uvec3 data[];
+};
+
+data[0]; // 0x1000
+data[1]; // 0x100C
+data[2]; // 0x1018
+data[3]; // 0x1024
+----
+
+We know that setting the alignment to `16` would be violated at `data[1]` and therefore we need to use an alignment of `4` in this case.
+Luckily shading languages will help do this for you as seen in both link:https://godbolt.org/z/jWGKax1ed[glslang] and link:https://godbolt.org/z/Y7xW3Mfd4[slang] .
 
 === Nullptr