903ab1fb59
FillImage is like Fill, except that it takes its color from one or more image atlases. kernel4 uses a single image for non-Vulkan hosts, and the dynamic sized array of image descriptors on Vulkan. A previous version of this commit used textures. I think images are a better choice for piet-gpu, for several reasons: - Texture sampling, in particular textureGrad, is slow on lower spec devices such as Google Pixel. Texture sampling is particularly slow and difficult to implement for CPU fallbacks. - Texture sampling need more parameters, in particular the full u,v transformation matrix, leading to a large increase in the command size. Since all commands use the same size, that memory penalty is paid by all scenes, not just scenes with textures. - It is unlikely that piet-gpu will support every kind of fill for every client, because each kind must be added to kernel4. With FillImage, a client will prepare the image(s) in separate shader stages, sampling and applying transformations and special effects as needed. Textures that align with the output pixel grid can be used directly, without pre-processing. Note that the pre-processing step can run concurrently with the piet-gpu pipeline; Only the last stage, kernel4, needs the images. Pre-processing most likely uses fixed function vertex/fragment programs, which on some GPUs may run in parallel with piet-gpu's compute programs. While here, fix a few validation errors: - Explicitly enable EXT_descriptor_indexing, KHR_maintenance3, KHR_get_physical_device_properties2. - Specify a vkDescriptorSetVariableDescriptorCountAllocateInfo for vkAllocateDescriptorSets. Otherwise, variable image2D arrays won't work (but sampler2D arrays do, at least on my setup). Updates #38 Signed-off-by: Elias Naur <mail@eliasnaur.com> |
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| doc | ||
| piet-gpu | ||
| piet-gpu-derive | ||
| piet-gpu-hal | ||
| piet-gpu-types | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| Cargo.lock | ||
| Cargo.toml | ||
| LICENSE-APACHE | ||
| LICENSE-MIT | ||
| README.md | ||
piet-gpu
This repo contains the new prototype for a new compute-centric 2D GPU renderer.
It succeeds the previous prototype, piet-metal.
Goals
The main goal is to answer research questions about the future of 2D rendering:
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Is a compute-centered approach better than rasterization (Direct2D)? How much so?
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To what extent do "advanced" GPU features (subgroups, descriptor arrays) help?
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Can we improve quality and extend the imaging model in useful ways?
Another goal is to explore a standards-based, portable approach to GPU compute.
Blogs and other writing
Much of the research progress on piet-gpu is documented in blog entries. See doc/blogs.md for pointers to those.
There is a much larger and detailed vision that explains the longer-term goals of the project, and how we might get there.
Why not gfx-hal?
It makes a lot of sense to use gfx-hal, as it addresses the ability to write kernel and runtime code once and run it portably. But in exploring it I've found some points of friction, especially in using more "advanced" features. To serve the research goals, I'm enjoying using Vulkan directly, through ash, which I've found does a good job tracking Vulkan releases. One example is experimenting with VK_EXT_subgroup_size_control.
The hal layer in this repo is strongly inspired by gfx-hal, but with some differences. One is that we're shooting for a compile-time pipeline to generate GPU IR on DX12 and Metal, while gfx-hal ships SPIRV-Cross in the runtime. To access Shader Model 6, that would also require bundling DXC at runtime, which is not yet implemented (though it's certainly possible).
Why not wgpu?
The case for wgpu is also strong, but it's even less mature. I'd love to see it become a solid foundation, at which point I'd use it as the main integration with Druid.
In short, the goal is to facilitate the research now, collect the data, and then use that to choose a best path for shipping later.
License and contributions.
The piet-gpu project is dual-licensed under both Apache 2.0 and MIT licenses.
In addition, the shaders are provided under the terms of the Unlicense. The intent is for this research to be used in as broad a context as possible.
Contributions are welcome by pull request. The Rust code of conduct applies.