No More Shading Languages: Compiling C++ to Vulkan Shaders
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
Graphics APIs have traditionally relied on shading languages, however, these languages have a number of fundamental defects and limitations. By contrast, GPU compute platforms offer powerful, feature-rich languages suitable for heterogeneous compute. We propose reframing shading languages as embedded domain-specific languages, layered on top of a more general language like C++, doing away with traditional limitations on pointers, functions, and recursion, to the benefit of programmability. This represents a significant compilation challenge because the limitations of shaders are reflected in their lower-level representations. We present the Vcc compiler, which allows conventional C and C++ code to run as Vulkan shaders. Our compiler is complemented by a simple shading library and exposes GPU particulars as intrinsics and annotations. We evaluate the performance of our compiler using a selection of benchmarks, including a real-time path tracer, achieving competitive performance compared to their native CUDA counterparts.
Description
CCS Concepts: Software and its engineering → Compilers; Computing methodologies → Rendering; Ray tracing
@inproceedings{10.2312:hpg.20251167,
booktitle = {High-Performance Graphics - Symposium Papers},
editor = {Knoll, Aaron and Peters, Christoph},
title = {{No More Shading Languages: Compiling C++ to Vulkan Shaders}},
author = {Devillers, Hugo and Kurtenacker, Matthias and Membarth, Richard and Lemme, Stefan and Kenzel, Michael and Yazici, Ömercan and Slusallek, Philipp},
year = {2025},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISSN = {2079-8687},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-291-2},
DOI = {10.2312/hpg.20251167}
}