decoder_ring.adoc

Vulkan Decoder Ring

This section provides a mapping between the Vulkan term for a concept and the terminology used in other APIs. It is organized in alphabetical order by Vulkan term. If you are searching for the Vulkan equivalent of a concept used in an API you know, you can find the term you know in this list and then search the Vulkan specification for the corresponding Vulkan term.

Note	Not everything will be a perfect 1:1 match, the goal is to give a rough idea where to start looking in the spec.

Vulkan	GL,GLES	DirectX	Metal
buffer device address		GPU virtual address
buffer view, texel buffer	texture buffer	typed buffer SRV, typed buffer UAV	texture buffer
color attachments	color attachments	render target	color attachments or render target
command buffer	part of context, display list, NV_command_list	command list	command buffer
command pool	part of context	command allocator	command queue
conditional rendering	conditional rendering	predication
depth/stencil attachment	depth Attachment and stencil Attachment	depth/stencil view	depth attachment and stencil attachment, depth render target and stencil render target
descriptor		descriptor	argument
descriptor pool		descriptor heap	heap
descriptor set		descriptor table	argument buffer
descriptor set layout binding, push descriptor		root parameter	argument in shader parameter list
device group	implicit (E.g. SLI,CrossFire)	multi-adapter device	peer group
device memory		heap	placement heap
event		split barrier
fence	fence, sync	ID3D12Fence::SetEventOnCompletion	completed handler, -[MTLCommandBuffer waitUntilComplete]
fragment shader	fragment shader	pixel shader	fragment shader or fragment function
fragment shader interlock	GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock	rasterizer order view (ROV)	raster order group
framebuffer	framebuffer object	collection of resources	MTLRenderPassDescriptor
heap		ID3D12Heap	MTLHeap
image	texture and renderbuffer	texture	texture
image layout		resource state
image tiling		image layout, swizzle
image view	texture view	render target view, depth/stencil view, shader resource view, unordered access view	texture view
interface matching (in/out)	varying (removed in GLSL 4.20)	Matching semantics	Pervertex input attributes
invocation	invocation	thread, lane	thread, lane
layer		slice	slice
logical device	context	device	device
memory type	automatically managed, texture storage hint, buffer storage	heap type, CPU page property	storage mode, CPU cache mode
multiview rendering	multiview rendering	view instancing	vertex amplification
physical device		adapter, node	device
pipeline	state and program or program pipeline	pipeline state	pipeline state
pipeline barrier, memory barrier	texture barrier, memory barrier	resource barrier	texture barrier, memory barrier
pipeline layout		root signature
queue	part of context	command queue	command queue
semaphore	fence, sync	fence	fence, event
shader module	shader object	resulting ID3DBlob from D3DCompileFromFile	shader library
shading rate attachment		shading rate image	rasterization rate map
sparse block	sparse block	tile	sparse tile
sparse image	sparse texture	reserved resource (D12), tiled resource (D11)	sparse texture
storage buffer	shader storage buffer	raw or structured buffer UAV	buffer in device address space
subgroup	subgroup	wave	SIMD-group, quadgroup
surface	HDC, GLXDrawable, EGLSurface	window	layer
swapchain	Part of HDC, GLXDrawable, EGLSurface	swapchain	layer
swapchain image	default framebuffer		drawable texture
task shader		amplification shader	object shader
tessellation control shader	tessellation control shader	hull shader	tessellation compute kernel
tessellation evaluation shader	tessellation evaluation shader	domain shader	post-tessellation vertex shader
timeline semaphore		D3D12 fence	event
transform feedback	transform feedback	stream-out
uniform buffer	uniform buffer	constant buffer views (CBV)	buffer in constant address space
workgroup	workgroup	threadgroup	threadgroup