The SPIR-V Tools project provides an API and commands for processing SPIR-V modules.
The project includes an assembler, binary module parser, disassembler, validator, and optimizer for SPIR-V. Except for the optimizer, all are based on a common static library. The library contains all of the implementation details, and is used in the standalone tools whilst also enabling integration into other code bases directly. The optimizer implementation resides in its own library, which depends on the core library.
The interfaces have stabilized: We don't anticipate making a breaking change for existing features.
SPIR-V is defined by the Khronos Group Inc. See the SPIR-V Registry for the SPIR-V specification, headers, and XML registry.
See CHANGES
for a high level summary of recent changes, by version.
SPIRV-Tools project version numbers are of the form v
year.
index and with
an optional -dev
suffix to indicate work in progress. For exampe, the
following versions are ordered from oldest to newest:
v2016.0
v2016.1-dev
v2016.1
v2016.2-dev
v2016.2
Use the --version
option on each command line tool to see the software
version. An API call reports the software version as a C-style string.
- Support for SPIR-V 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3
- Based on SPIR-V syntax described by JSON grammar files in the SPIRV-Headers repository.
- Support for extended instruction sets:
- GLSL std450 version 1.0 Rev 3
- OpenCL version 1.0 Rev 2
- Assembler only does basic syntax checking. No cross validation of
IDs or types is performed, except to check literal arguments to
OpConstant
,OpSpecConstant
, andOpSwitch
.
See syntax.md
for the assembly language syntax.
The validator checks validation rules described by the SPIR-V specification.
Khronos recommends that tools that create or transform SPIR-V modules use the validator to ensure their outputs are valid, and that tools that consume SPIR-V modules optionally use the validator to protect themselves from bad inputs. This is especially encouraged for debug and development scenarios.
The validator has one-sided error: it will only return an error when it has implemented a rule check and the module violates that rule.
The validator is incomplete. See the CHANGES file for reports on completed work, and the Validator sub-project for planned and in-progress work.
Note: The validator checks some Universal Limits, from section 2.17 of the SPIR-V spec. The validator will fail on a module that exceeds those minimum upper bound limits. It is future work to parameterize the validator to allow larger limits accepted by a more than minimally capable SPIR-V consumer.
Note: The optimizer is still under development.
Currently supported optimizations:
- General
- Strip debug info
- Specialization Constants
- Set spec constant default value
- Freeze spec constant
- Fold
OpSpecConstantOp
andOpSpecConstantComposite
- Unify constants
- Eliminate dead constant
- Code Reduction
- Inline all function calls exhaustively
- Convert local access chains to inserts/extracts
- Eliminate local load/store in single block
- Eliminate local load/store with single store
- Eliminate local load/store with multiple stores
- Eliminate local extract from insert
- Eliminate dead instructions (aggressive)
- Eliminate dead branches
- Merge single successor / single predecessor block pairs
- Eliminate common uniform loads
- Remove duplicates: Capabilities, extended instruction imports, types, and decorations.
For the latest list with detailed documentation, please refer to
include/spirv-tools/optimizer.hpp
.
For suggestions on using the code reduction options, please refer to this white paper.
Note: The linker is still under development.
Current features:
- Combine multiple SPIR-V binary modules together.
- Combine into a library (exports are retained) or an executable (no symbols are exported).
See the CHANGES file for reports on completed work, and the General sub-project for planned and in-progress work.
- Utility filters
- Build target
spirv-tools-vimsyntax
generates filespvasm.vim
. Copy that file into your$HOME/.vim/syntax
directory to get SPIR-V assembly syntax highlighting in Vim. This build target is not built by default.
The SPIR-V Tools project is maintained by members of the The Khronos Group Inc., and is hosted at https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Tools.
Consider joining the [email protected]
mailing list, via
https://www.khronos.org/spir/spirv-tools-mailing-list/.
The mailing list is used to discuss development plans for the SPIRV-Tools as an open source project.
Once discussion is resolved,
specific work is tracked via issues and sometimes in one of the
projects.
(To provide feedback on the SPIR-V specification, file an issue on the SPIRV-Headers GitHub repository.)
See projects.md
to see how we use the
GitHub Project
feature
to organize planned and in-progress work.
Contributions via merge request are welcome. Changes should:
- Be provided under the Apache 2.0.
- You'll be prompted with a one-time "click-through" Khronos Open Source Contributor License Agreement (CLA) dialog as part of submitting your pull request or other contribution to GitHub.
- Include tests to cover updated functionality.
- C++ code should follow the Google C++ Style Guide.
- Code should be formatted with
clang-format
. Settings are defined by the included .clang-format file.
We intend to maintain a linear history on the GitHub master
branch.
example
: demo code of using SPIRV-Tools APIsexternal/googletest
: Intended location for the googletest sources, not providedexternal/effcee
: Location of Effcee sources, if theeffcee
library is not already configured by an enclosing project.external/re2
: Location of RE2 sources, if theeffcee
library is not already configured by an enclosing project. (The Effcee project already requires RE2.)include/
: API clients should add this directory to the include search pathexternal/spirv-headers
: Intended location for SPIR-V headers, not providedinclude/spirv-tools/libspirv.h
: C API public interfacesource/
: API implementationtest/
: Tests, using the googletest frameworktools/
: Command line executables
Example of getting sources, assuming SPIRV-Tools is configured as a standalone project:
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Tools.git spirv-tools
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Headers.git spirv-tools/external/spirv-headers
git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git spirv-tools/external/googletest
git clone https://github.com/google/effcee.git spirv-tools/external/effcee
git clone https://github.com/google/re2.git spirv-tools/external/re2
The project contains a number of tests, used to drive development
and ensure correctness. The tests are written using the
googletest framework. The googletest
source is not provided with this project. There are two ways to enable
tests:
- If SPIR-V Tools is configured as part of an enclosing project, then the
enclosing project should configure
googletest
before configuring SPIR-V Tools. - If SPIR-V Tools is configured as a standalone project, then download the
googletest
source into the<spirv-dir>/external/googletest
directory before configuring and building the project.
Note: You must use a version of googletest that includes a fix for googletest issue 610. The fix is included on the googletest master branch any time after 2015-11-10. In particular, googletest must be newer than version 1.7.0.
Some tests depend on the Effcee library for stateful matching. Effcee itself depends on RE2.
- If SPIRV-Tools is configured as part of a larger project that already uses Effcee, then that project should include Effcee before SPIRV-Tools.
- Otherwise, SPIRV-Tools expects Effcee sources to appear in
external/effcee
and RE2 sources to appear inexternal/re2
.
Currently Effcee is an optional dependency, but soon it will be required.
Instead of building manually, you can also download the binaries for your platform directly from the master-tot release on GitHub. Those binaries are automatically uploaded by the buildbots after successful testing and they always reflect the current top of the tree of the master branch.
The project uses CMake to generate platform-specific build
configurations. Assume that <spirv-dir>
is the root directory of the checked
out code:
cd <spirv-dir>
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Headers.git external/spirv-headers
git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git external/googletest # optional
mkdir build && cd build
cmake [-G <platform-generator>] <spirv-dir>
Once the build files have been generated, build using your preferred development environment.
The following CMake options are supported:
SPIRV_COLOR_TERMINAL={ON|OFF}
, defaultON
- Enables color console output.SPIRV_SKIP_TESTS={ON|OFF}
, defaultOFF
- Build only the library and the command line tools. This will prevent the tests from being built.SPIRV_SKIP_EXECUTABLES={ON|OFF}
, defaultOFF
- Build only the library, not the command line tools and tests.SPIRV_BUILD_COMPRESSION={ON|OFF}
, defaultOFF
- Build SPIR-V compressing codec.SPIRV_USE_SANITIZER=<sanitizer>
, default is no sanitizing - On UNIX platforms with an appropriate version ofclang
this option enables the use of the sanitizers documented here. This should only be used with a debug build.SPIRV_WARN_EVERYTHING={ON|OFF}
, defaultOFF
- On UNIX platforms enable more strict warnings. The code might not compile with this option enabled. For Clang, enables-Weverything
. For GCC, enables-Wpedantic
. SeeCMakeLists.txt
for details.SPIRV_WERROR={ON|OFF}
, defaultON
- Forces a compilation error on any warnings encountered by enabling the compiler-specific compiler front-end option.
Additionally, you can pass additional C preprocessor definitions to SPIRV-Tools
via setting SPIRV_TOOLS_EXTRA_DEFINITIONS
. For example, by setting it to
/D_ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL=0
on Windows, you can disable checked iterators and
iterator debugging.
The internals of the library use C++11 features, and are exposed via both a C and C++ API.
In order to use the library from an application, the include path should point
to <spirv-dir>/include
, which will enable the application to include the
header <spirv-dir>/include/spirv-tools/libspirv.h{|pp}
then linking against
the static library in <spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools.a
or
<spirv-build-dir>/source/SPIRV-Tools.lib
.
For optimization, the header file is
<spirv-dir>/include/spirv-tools/optimizer.hpp
, and the static library is
<spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools-opt.a
or
<spirv-build-dir>/source/SPIRV-Tools-opt.lib
.
SPIRV-Tools
CMake target: Creates the static library:<spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools.a
on Linux and OS X.<spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools.lib
on Windows.
SPIRV-Tools-opt
CMake target: Creates the static library:<spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools-opt.a
on Linux and OS X.<spirv-build-dir>/source/libSPIRV-Tools-opt.lib
on Windows.
The interfaces are still under development, and are expected to change.
There are five main entry points into the library in the C interface:
spvTextToBinary
: An assembler, translating text to a binary SPIR-V module.spvBinaryToText
: A disassembler, translating a binary SPIR-V module to text.spvBinaryParse
: The entry point to a binary parser API. It issues callbacks for the header and each parsed instruction. The disassembler is implemented as a client ofspvBinaryParse
.spvValidate
implements the validator functionality. IncompletespvValidateBinary
implements the validator functionality. Incomplete
The C++ interface is comprised of three classes, SpirvTools
, Optimizer
and
Linker
, all in the spvtools
namespace.
SpirvTools
providesAssemble
,Disassemble
, andValidate
methods.Optimizer
provides methods for registering and running optimization passes.Linker
provides methods for combining together multiple binaries.
Command line tools, which wrap the above library functions, are provided to
assemble or disassemble shader files. It's a convention to name SPIR-V
assembly and binary files with suffix .spvasm
and .spv
, respectively.
The assembler reads the assembly language text, and emits the binary form.
The standalone assembler is the exectuable called spirv-as
, and is located in
<spirv-build-dir>/tools/spirv-as
. The functionality of the assembler is implemented
by the spvTextToBinary
library function.
spirv-as
- the standalone assembler<spirv-dir>/tools/as
Use option -h
to print help.
The disassembler reads the binary form, and emits assembly language text.
The standalone disassembler is the executable called spirv-dis
, and is located in
<spirv-build-dir>/tools/spirv-dis
. The functionality of the disassembler is implemented
by the spvBinaryToText
library function.
spirv-dis
- the standalone disassembler<spirv-dir>/tools/dis
Use option -h
to print help.
The output includes syntax colouring when printing to the standard output stream, on Linux, Windows, and OS X.
The linker combines multiple SPIR-V binary modules together, resulting in a single binary module as output.
This is a work in progress. The linker does not support OpenCL program linking options related to math flags. (See section 5.6.5.2 in OpenCL 1.2)
spirv-link
- the standalone linker<spirv-dir>/tools/link
The optimizer processes a SPIR-V binary module, applying transformations in the specified order.
This is a work in progress, with initially only few available transformations.
spirv-opt
- the standalone optimizer<spirv-dir>/tools/opt
Warning: This functionality is under development, and is incomplete.
The standalone validator is the executable called spirv-val
, and is located in
<spirv-build-dir>/tools/spirv-val
. The functionality of the validator is implemented
by the spvValidate
library function.
The validator operates on the binary form.
spirv-val
- the standalone validator<spirv-dir>/tools/val
The control flow dumper prints the control flow graph for a SPIR-V module as a GraphViz graph.
This is experimental.
spirv-cfg
- the control flow graph dumper<spirv-dir>/tools/cfg
-
spirv-lesspipe.sh
- Automatically disassembles.spv
binary files for theless
program, on compatible systems. For example, set theLESSOPEN
environment variable as follows, assuming bothspirv-lesspipe.sh
andspirv-dis
are on your executable search path:export LESSOPEN='| spirv-lesspipe.sh "%s"'
Then you page through a disassembled module as follows:
less foo.spv
- The
spirv-lesspipe.sh
script will pass through any extra arguments tospirv-dis
. So, for example, you can turn off colours and friendly ID naming as follows:export LESSOPEN='| spirv-lesspipe.sh "%s" --no-color --raw-id'
- The
-
vim-spirv - A vim plugin which supports automatic disassembly of
.spv
files using the:edit
command and assembly using the:write
command. The plugin also provides additional features which include; syntax highlighting; highlighting of all ID's matching the ID under the cursor; and highlighting errors where theInstruction
operand ofOpExtInst
is used without an appropriateOpExtInstImport
. -
50spirv-tools.el
- Automatically disassembles '.spv' binary files when loaded into the emacs text editor, and re-assembles them when saved, provided any modifications to the file are valid. This functionality must be explicitly requested by defining the symbol SPIRV_TOOLS_INSTALL_EMACS_HELPERS as follows:cmake -DSPIRV_TOOLS_INSTALL_EMACS_HELPERS=true ...
In addition, this helper is only installed if the directory /etc/emacs/site-start.d exists, which is typically true if emacs is installed on the system.
Note that symbol IDs are not currently preserved through a load/edit/save operation. This may change if the ability is added to spirv-as.
Tests are only built when googletest is found. Use ctest
to run all the
tests.
See the projects pages for more information.
- The disassembler could emit helpful annotations in comments. For example:
- Use variable name information from debug instructions to annotate key operations on variables.
- Show control flow information by annotating
OpLabel
instructions with that basic block's predecessors.
- Error messages could be improved.
This is a work in progress.
- The linker could accept math transformations such as allowing MADs, or other math flags passed at linking-time in OpenCL.
- Linkage attributes can not be applied through a group.
- Check decorations of linked functions attributes.
- Remove dead instructions, such as OpName targeting imported symbols.
Full license terms are in LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2015-2016 The Khronos Group Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.