Currently all buffer types were stored in host memory, which is visible to the GPU as well.
This is typically slow as the data would be transferred over the PCI bus when used.
Most of the time Index and Vertex buffers are written once and read many times so it makes
more sense to locate them on the GPU. Storage buffers typically require quick access as they
are created for shading/compute purposes.
This PR will try to store vertex buffers, index buffers and storage buffers on device memory
to improve the performance.
Uniform buffers are still located on host memory as they can be uploaded during binding process.
This can (will) reset the graphics pipeline triggering draw calls using unattached resources.
In future this could be optimized further as in:
* using different pools for allocating specific buffers, with a fallback when buffers cannot be
stored on the GPU anymore.
* store uniform buffers in device memory
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/115343
In Blender a context should not be shared between threads. In Vulkan a
command pool must not be shared between threads. In the current
implementation the command pool are stored on device level and could
therefore be shared between multiple context which made the implementation
not matching these rules.
This PR moves the command pool from device to command buffers where it
would not conflict between other contexts. This PR doesn't make the Vulkan
backend fully multithreaded. The access to the queue is still missing.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114977
On some platforms `VK_FORMAT_R8G8B8_*` are not supported as vertex buffers. The
obvious workaround for this is to use `VK_FORMAT_R8G8B8A8_*`. Using unsupported
vertex formats would crash Blender as it is not able to compile the graphics
pipelines that use them.
Known platforms are:
- NVIDIA Mobile GPUs (Quadro M1000M)
- AMD Polaris (open source drivers)
This PR adds the initial workings for other unsupported vertex buffer formats we
need to fix in the future.
`VKDevice.workarounds.vertex_formats` contain booleans if the workaround for
a specific format should be turned on (`r8g8b8 = true`). `VertexFormatConverter` can be
used to identify if conversions are needed and perform the conversion.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114572
Vulkan API uses Flags and FlagBits for enumerations. The FlagBits
contains the options that can be hold with the Flags data type.
This wasn't well understood at the beginning of the project and
the FlagBits where used where Flags should have been used. This cleanup
fixes this, improving the readability of the code where bit
manipulations where used.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114459
Goal is to reduce the number of command buffer flushes by tracking what is
happening in the different command queues. This is an initial step towards
advanced queue-ing strategies.
The new (intermediate) strategy records commands to different command
buffers based on what they do. There is a command buffer for data transfers,
compute pipelines and graphics pipelines.
When a compute command is recorded it ensures that all graphic commands
are finished. When a graphic command is recorded it ensures all compute
commands are finished. When a graphic or compute command is scheduled
all recorded data transfer commands are scheduled as well.
Some improvements are expected as multiple compute and data transfers
commands can now be scheduled at the same time and don't need to unbind
and rebind render passes. Especially when using EEVEE-Next which is
compute centric the performance change is visible for the user.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114104
Listing the "Blender Foundation" as copyright holder implied the Blender
Foundation holds copyright to files which may include work from many
developers.
While keeping copyright on headers makes sense for isolated libraries,
Blender's own code may be refactored or moved between files in a way
that makes the per file copyright holders less meaningful.
Copyright references to the "Blender Foundation" have been replaced with
"Blender Authors", with the exception of `./extern/` since these this
contains libraries which are more isolated, any changed to license
headers there can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Some directories in `./intern/` have also been excluded:
- `./intern/cycles/` it's own `AUTHORS` file is planned.
- `./intern/opensubdiv/`.
An "AUTHORS" file has been added, using the chromium projects authors
file as a template.
Design task: #110784
Ref !110783.
The current Vulkan resource management has some issues as context that
are not active can still use resources that are freed via another
context.
When this happens incorrect data can be read on the GPU and even crash
Blender. When trying to bind something that now contains other memory
pointers.
This change introduces that contexts are tracked via the device.
Context will be registered/unregistered with the device instance.
Unbinding of resources must pass the device and the device will check
all registered contexts. Binding of resources will happen via the active
context only.
On user perspective this now allowes:
- Opening/switching files
- Switching workspaces
- Switching render engines
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108968
A lot of files were missing copyright field in the header and
the Blender Foundation contributed to them in a sense of bug
fixing and general maintenance.
This change makes it explicit that those files are at least
partially copyrighted by the Blender Foundation.
Note that this does not make it so the Blender Foundation is
the only holder of the copyright in those files, and developers
who do not have a signed contract with the foundation still
hold the copyright as well.
Another aspect of this change is using SPDX format for the
header. We already used it for the license specification,
and now we state it for the copyright as well, following the
FAQ:
https://reuse.software/faq/
After uploading the vertex buffer the state got corrupted.
Reason of this corruption is an assign-compare operation that should
just be an compare operation.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107875
Initial graphic pipeline targeting. The goal of this PR is to have an initial
graphics pipeline with missing features. It should help identifying
areas that requires engineering.
Current state is that developers of the GPU module can help with the many
smaller pieces that needs to be engineered in order to get it working. It is not
intended for users or developers from other modules, but your welcome to learn
and give feedback on the code and engineering part.
We do expect that large parts of the code still needs to be re-engineered into
a more future-proof implementation.
**Some highlights**:
- In Vulkan the state is kept in the pipeline. Therefore the state is tracked
per pipeline. In the near future this could be used as a cache. More research
is needed against the default pipeline cache that vulkan already provides.
- This PR is based on the work that Kazashi Yoshioka already did. And include
work from him in the next areas
- Vertex attributes
- Vertex data conversions
- Pipeline state
- Immediate support working.
- This PR modifies the VKCommandBuffer to keep track of the framebuffer and its
binding state(render pass). Some Vulkan commands require no render pass to be
active, other require a render pass. As the order of our commands on API level
can not be separated this PR introduces a state engine to keep track of the
current state and desired state. This is a temporary solution, the final
solution will be proposed when we have a pixel on the screen. At that time
I expect that we can design a command encoder that supports all the cases
we need.
**Notices**:
- This branch works on NVIDIA GPUs and has been validated on a Linux system. AMD
is known not to work (stalls) and Intel GPUs have not been tested at all. Windows might work
but hasn't been validated yet.
- The graphics pipeline is implemented with pixels in mind, not with performance. Currently
when a draw call is scheduled it is flushed and waited until it is finished drawing, before
other draw calls can be scheduled. We expected the performance to be worse that it actually
is, but we expect huge performance gains in the future.
- Any advanced drawing (that is used by the image editor, compositor or 3d viewport) isn't
implemented and might crash when used.
- Using multiple windows or resizing of window isn't supported and will stall the system.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106224
Vulkan doesn't have a conversion from uint32_t/int32_t to float. It does
have conversions from 16/8 bits. Main reason is that Vulkan expects that
there is no benefit when converting 32 bits from one type to the other
and should be solved by passing the right data type.
In Blender however this isn't the case as there are benefits on other
GPU backends (OpenGL for example).
This PR adds helper function to check if conversion is needed and
perform any conversions in place. It also implements the function to
upload vertex buffers to the GPU.
NOTE: Test cases have been added to validate this, but they are not
able to run on the Vulkan backend just yet, because they require the
graphics pipeline to be available.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107733
ShaderInput lookup used to be explicit as in we know for sure that the
shader input exists. This was guarded by a assert. During development
of the graphics pipeline we came to the conclusion that this isn't
always the case due to its late bindings of resources.
This PR Makes the shader input lookup return an optional result.
This result can then be checked depending on the area where it is used
to validate the existence.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107735
Previous GHOST_ContextVK would create a logical device for each
context. Blender uses multiple contexts at the same time and wasn't able
to share resources between them as the logical device where different.
This patch will create a single logical device and share them between
multiple contexts. This allows sharing memory/shaders between contexts
and make sure that all memory allocations are freed from the device it
was allocated from.
Some allocations in Blender are freed when there isn't a context, this
was failing in the previous implementation. We didn't noticed it before
as we didn't test multiple contexts.
This patch also moves device specific data structures from VKContext to
VKDevice like the descriptor pools, debug layers etc.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107606
The goal is to solve confusion of the "All rights reserved" for licensing
code under an open-source license.
The phrase "All rights reserved" comes from a historical convention that
required this phrase for the copyright protection to apply. This convention
is no longer relevant.
However, even though the phrase has no meaning in establishing the copyright
it has not lost meaning in terms of licensing.
This change makes it so code under the Blender Foundation copyright does
not use "all rights reserved". This is also how the GPL license itself
states how to apply it to the source code:
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software ...
This change does not change copyright notice in cases when the copyright
is dual (BF and an author), or just an author of the code. It also does
mot change copyright which is inherited from NaN Holding BV as it needs
some further investigation about what is the proper way to handle it.
For example
```
OIIOOutputDriver::~OIIOOutputDriver()
{
}
```
becomes
```
OIIOOutputDriver::~OIIOOutputDriver() {}
```
Saves quite some vertical space, which is especially handy for
constructors.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105594
It is recommended to map buffers once and not each time the
mapped memory is needed. This patch will map the buffer when
created and unmap the buffer when the buffer is freed.
This patch will reduce the overhead where the Vulkan driver or
the virtual memory manager needs to be accessed.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105588
Descriptor set locations are now determined in the
VKShaderInterface. Issues with the previous solution:
- Due to legacy code in GPU module the locations/bindings
must be the same. Using one for something else might
result in undesired lookups, incorrect resource
bindings.
- Images/Textures reuses the same namespace, that didn't
work as expected when looking up the resources via
its binding.
This refactoring is required for adding support for
push constants.
Pull Request #105073
This patch adds initial support for compute shaders to
the vulkan backend. As the development is oriented to the test-
cases we have the implementation is limited to what is used there.
It has been validated that with this patch that the following test
cases are running as expected
- `GPUVulkanTest.gpu_shader_compute_vbo`
- `GPUVulkanTest.gpu_shader_compute_ibo`
- `GPUVulkanTest.gpu_shader_compute_ssbo`
- `GPUVulkanTest.gpu_storage_buffer_create_update_read`
- `GPUVulkanTest.gpu_shader_compute_2d`
This patch includes:
- Allocating VkBuffer on device.
- Uploading data from CPU to VkBuffer.
- Binding VkBuffer as SSBO to a compute shader.
- Execute compute shader and altering VkBuffer.
- Download the VkBuffer to CPU ram.
- Validate that it worked.
- Use device only vertex buffer as SSBO
- Use device only index buffer as SSBO
- Use device only image buffers
GHOST API has been changed as the original design was created before
we even had support for compute shaders in blender. The function
`GHOST_getVulkanBackbuffer` has been separated to retrieve the command
buffer without a backbuffer (`GHOST_getVulkanCommandBuffer`). In order
to do correct command buffer processing we needed access to the queue
owned by GHOST. This is returned as part of the `GHOST_getVulkanHandles`
function.
Open topics (not considered part of this patch)
- Memory barriers & command buffer encoding
- Indirect compute dispatching
- Rest of the test cases
- Data conversions when requested data format is different than on device.
- GPUVulkanTest.gpu_shader_compute_1d is supported on AMD devices.
NVIDIA doesn't seem to support 1d textures.
Pull-request: #104518
The GPU module has 2 different styles when reading back data from
GPU buffers. The SSBOs used a memcpy to copy the data to a
pre-allocated buffer. IndexBuf/VertBuf gave back a driver/platform
controlled pointer to the memory.
Readback is done for test cases returning mapped pointers is not safe.
For this reason we settled on using the same approach as the SSBO.
Copy the data to a caller pre-allocated buffer.
Reason why this API is currently changed is that the Vulkan API is more
strict on mapping/unmapping buffers that can lead to potential issues
down the road.
Pull Request #104571
This patch adds a placeholder for the vulkan backend.
When activated (`WITH_VULKAN_BACKEND=On` and `--gpu-backend vulkan`)
it might open a blender screen, but nothing should be visible as
none of the functions are implemented or otherwise crash on a nullptr.
This is expected as this is just a placeholder. The goal is to add shader compilation
+validation to this backend as one of the next steps so we can validate
changes to existing shaders on OpenGL, Metal and Vulkan at the same time.
Reviewed By: fclem
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D16338
