VK_EXT_rasterization_order_attachment_access.proposal

This proposal extends the mechanism of input attachments to allow access to framebuffer attachments that are used both as input and as color or depth/stencil attachments from one fragment to the next, in rasterization order, without explicit synchronization.

Problem Statement

Renderpasses, and specifically subpass self-dependencies enable much of the same functionality as the framebuffer fetch and pixel local storage extensions did for OpenGL ES. But certain techniques such as programmable blending are awkward or impractical to implement with these alone, in part because a self-dependency is required every time a fragment will read a value at a given sample coordinate. For these use-cases, a mechanisms that more closely matches framebuffer fetch is useful.

Solution Space

For simplicity, this proposal extends the original render pass API and not the VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering API. Raster order attachment reads are done as input attachment reads (as before), but self-dependencies are no longer required when reading a value written by fragments earlier in rasterization order.

Since input attachments are not used in dynamic rendering, a different approach is needed there. This proposal does not address that issue.

Proposal

The following features are exposed by this extension:

typedef struct VkPhysicalDeviceRasterizationOrderAttachmentAccessFeaturesEXT {
    VkStructureType    sType;
    void*              pNext;
    VkBool32           rasterizationOrderColorAttachmentAccess;
    VkBool32           rasterizationOrderDepthAttachmentAccess;
    VkBool32           rasterizationOrderStencilAttachmentAccess;
} VkPhysicalDeviceRasterizationOrderAttachmentAccessFeaturesEXT;

These features allow the implementation to expose separately whether rasterization order access is supported for color attachments, depth attachments, and stencil attachments.

The application declares at pipeline creation time whether rasterization order access will be used for color, depth, or stencil aspects, by setting the appropriate combination of the following flags on the pipeline:

typedef enum VkPipelineDepthStencilStateCreateFlagBits {
    VK_PIPELINE_DEPTH_STENCIL_STATE_CREATE_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_DEPTH_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000001,
    VK_PIPELINE_DEPTH_STENCIL_STATE_CREATE_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_STENCIL_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000002,
    VK_PIPELINE_DEPTH_STENCIL_STATE_CREATE_FLAG_BITS_MAX_ENUM = 0x7FFFFFFF
} VkPipelineDepthStencilStateCreateFlagBits;
typedef VkFlags VkPipelineDepthStencilStateCreateFlags;

typedef enum VkPipelineColorBlendStateCreateFlagBits {
    VK_PIPELINE_COLOR_BLEND_STATE_CREATE_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000001,
    VK_PIPELINE_COLOR_BLEND_STATE_CREATE_FLAG_BITS_MAX_ENUM = 0x7FFFFFFF
} VkPipelineColorBlendStateCreateFlagBits;

Additionally, per subpass flags are added to indicate whether a subpass is compatible with rasterization order access. The following flags are added to VkSubpassDescriptionFlagBits:

typedef enum VkSubpassDescriptionFlagBits {
    /* existing flags not shown */
    VK_SUBPASS_DESCRIPTION_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_COLOR_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000010,
    VK_SUBPASS_DESCRIPTION_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_DEPTH_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000020,
    VK_SUBPASS_DESCRIPTION_RASTERIZATION_ORDER_ATTACHMENT_STENCIL_ACCESS_BIT_EXT = 0x00000040,
    VK_SUBPASS_DESCRIPTION_FLAG_BITS_MAX_ENUM = 0x7FFFFFFF
} VkSubpassDescriptionFlagBits;

Issues

RESOLVED: Is there any interaction with the VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering extension?

No. This extension only affects reads from input attachments. Render pass instances begun with vkCmdBeginRenderingKHR do not have input attachments and a different mechanism will be needed to provide similar functionality in that case.

RESOLVED: What are the differences to the VK_ARM_rasterization_order_attachment_access extension?

None. This extension is a multi-vendor version of that extension with no changes. The two extensions can be used interchangeably since the API structures and enumeration alias each other.