|
| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +title: "[NNNN] - SPIR-V Push constants" |
| 3 | +params: |
| 4 | + status: Design In Progress |
| 5 | + authors: |
| 6 | + - Keenuts: Nathan Gauër |
| 7 | +--- |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | +## Introduction |
| 10 | + |
| 11 | +Push Constants are a Vulkan mechanism to pass a small amount of data to the |
| 12 | +shaders without creating buffers or modifying bindings. |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +Usage is as follows: |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +```hlsl |
| 17 | +struct S { |
| 18 | + float3 light_color; |
| 19 | +}; |
| 20 | +
|
| 21 | +[[vk::push_constant]] |
| 22 | +S data; |
| 23 | +
|
| 24 | +void main() { |
| 25 | + [...] |
| 26 | + do_something(data.light_color) |
| 27 | +} |
| 28 | +``` |
| 29 | +## Motivation |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +This is a core feature of HLSL+Vulkan. |
| 32 | + |
| 33 | +## Proposed Solution |
| 34 | + |
| 35 | +### HLSL - Parsing |
| 36 | + |
| 37 | +``[[vk::push_constant]]`` is a normal attribute in the `vk` namespace, with |
| 38 | +no custom parsing. |
| 39 | +This attribute is only allowed on global variables. Additional checks like |
| 40 | +storage class compatibility is done in sema. |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +At this stage, we know the attribute can only be attached to a global |
| 43 | +variable. |
| 44 | + |
| 45 | +### HLSL - Sema |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +During sema, compatibility checks between the global variable definition |
| 48 | +and the attribute are checked, and the global variable definition is created. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +Additional checks are: |
| 51 | +- The attribute is only allowed on a global variable with a struct type. |
| 52 | +- There can only be one ``[[vk::push_constant]]`` attribute in the shader. |
| 53 | +- There can be no VLA in the struct type (or a nested struct type). |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +DXC allows any storage class to be attached to a push constant. I believe |
| 56 | +this is an oversight and we should probably refuse this. As result, the |
| 57 | +following rules will apply: |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +- The variable storage class must be either `auto` or `uniform`. |
| 60 | +- The variable can be marked `const`, but is always considered `const`. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +### DXIL |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | +This being a Vulkan specific feature, the attribute is ignored when targeting |
| 65 | +DXIL. This means the push constant global becomes part of the cbuffer when |
| 66 | +building for DXIL. |
| 67 | + |
| 68 | +The attribute being ignored, the variable belong to the cbuffer, meaning no |
| 69 | +additional handling is required. |
| 70 | + |
| 71 | +### SPIR-V |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +The created global variable after parsing has the following characteristics: |
| 74 | + - the global variable will be marked as `const`. |
| 75 | + - the variable address space will be `hlsl_push_constant`. |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | +Codegen will be left almost as-is as we simply load a variable in a different |
| 78 | +address space. The layout rule for those struct follows the same rules as |
| 79 | +[RW]StructuredBuffers. |
| 80 | +What we need to fixup is the cbuffer logic as a global variable with the |
| 81 | +HLSLVkPushConstant attribute should not be added to the constant buffer. |
| 82 | + |
| 83 | +The backend will then lower variables into the `hlsl_push_constant` address |
| 84 | +space into a `PushConstant` storage class. The rest is similar to any variable |
| 85 | +in another address space and should already be handled. |
| 86 | + |
| 87 | +## Draft PR |
| 88 | + |
| 89 | +There is also a draft PR implementing this end-to-end: |
| 90 | + - https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/166793 |
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