VK_NV_shader_image_footprint(3)

# VK_NV_shader_image_footprint(3) Manual Page

## Name

VK_NV_shader_image_footprint - device extension

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## Registered Extension Number

205

## Revision

2

## Ratification Status

Not ratified

## Extension and Version Dependencies

VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
or
Vulkan Version 1.1

## SPIR-V Dependencies

- SPV_NV_shader_image_footprint

## Contact

- Pat Brown [GitHub]nvpbrown

## Other Extension Metadata

Last Modified Date

  2018-09-13

IP Status

  No known IP claims.

Interactions and External Dependencies

  - This extension provides API support for `GL_NV_shader_texture_footprint`

Contributors

  - Pat Brown, NVIDIA

  - Chris Lentini, NVIDIA

  - Daniel Koch, NVIDIA

  - Jeff Bolz, NVIDIA

## Description

This extension adds Vulkan support for the `SPV_NV_shader_image_footprint` SPIR-V extension. That SPIR-V extension provides a new instruction `OpImageSampleFootprintNV` allowing shaders to determine the set of texels that would be accessed by an equivalent filtered texture lookup.

Instead of returning a filtered texture value, the instruction returns a structure that can be interpreted by shader code to determine the footprint of a filtered texture lookup. This structure includes integer values that identify a small neighborhood of texels in the image being accessed and a bitfield that indicates which texels in that neighborhood would be used. The structure also includes a bitfield where each bit identifies whether any texel in a small aligned block of texels would be fetched by the texture lookup. The size of each block is specified by an access granularity provided by the shader. The minimum granularity supported by this extension is 2x2 (for 2D textures) and 2x2x2 (for 3D textures); the maximum granularity is 256x256 (for 2D textures) or 64x32x32 (for 3D textures). Each footprint query returns the footprint from a single texture level. When using minification filters that combine accesses from multiple mipmap levels, shaders must perform separate queries for the two levels accessed (“fine” and “coarse”). The footprint query also returns a flag indicating if the texture lookup would access texels from only one mipmap level or from two neighboring levels.

This extension should be useful for multi-pass rendering operations that do an initial expensive rendering pass to produce a first image that is then used as a texture for a second pass. If the second pass ends up accessing only portions of the first image (e.g., due to visibility), the work spent rendering the non-accessed portion of the first image was wasted. With this feature, an application can limit this waste using an initial pass over the geometry in the second image that performs a footprint query for each visible pixel to determine the set of pixels that it needs from the first image. This pass would accumulate an aggregate footprint of all visible pixels into a separate “footprint image” using shader atomics. Then, when rendering the first image, the application can kill all shading work for pixels not in this aggregate footprint.

This extension has a number of limitations. The `OpImageSampleFootprintNV` instruction only supports for two- and three-dimensional textures. Footprint evaluation only supports the CLAMP_TO_EDGE wrap mode; results are undefined for all other wrap modes. Only a limited set of granularity values and that set does not support separate coverage information for each texel in the original image.

When using SPIR-V generated from the OpenGL Shading Language, the new instruction will be generated from code using the new `textureFootprint*NV` built-in functions from the `GL_NV_shader_texture_footprint` shading language extension.

## New Structures

- Extending VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures2, VkDeviceCreateInfo:

  - VkPhysicalDeviceShaderImageFootprintFeaturesNV

## New Enum Constants

- `VK_NV_SHADER_IMAGE_FOOTPRINT_EXTENSION_NAME`

- `VK_NV_SHADER_IMAGE_FOOTPRINT_SPEC_VERSION`

- Extending VkStructureType:

  - VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_SHADER_IMAGE_FOOTPRINT_FEATURES_NV

## New SPIR-V Capability

- `ImageFootprintNV`

## Issues

(1) The footprint returned by the SPIR-V instruction is a structure that includes an anchor, an offset, and a mask that represents a 8x8 or 4x4x4 neighborhood of texel groups. But the bits of the mask are not stored in simple pitch order. Why is the footprint built this way?

RESOLVED: We expect that applications using this feature will want to use a fixed granularity and accumulate coverage information from the returned footprints into an aggregate “footprint image” that tracks the portions of an image that would be needed by regular texture filtering. If an application is using a two-dimensional image with 4x4 pixel granularity, we expect that the footprint image will use 64-bit texels where each bit in an 8x8 array of bits corresponds to coverage for a 4x4 block in the original image. Texel (0,0) in the footprint image would correspond to texels (0,0) through (31,31) in the original image.

In the usual case, the footprint for a single access will fully contained in a 32x32 aligned region of the original texture, which corresponds to a single 64-bit texel in the footprint image. In that case, the implementation will return an anchor coordinate pointing at the single footprint image texel, an offset vector of (0,0), and a mask whose bits are aligned with the bits in the footprint texel. For this case, the shader can simply atomically OR the mask bits into the contents of the footprint texel to accumulate footprint coverage.

In the worst case, the footprint for a single access spans multiple 32x32 aligned regions and may require updates to four separate footprint image texels. In this case, the implementation will return an anchor coordinate pointing at the lower right footprint image texel and an offset will identify how many “columns” and “rows” of the returned 8x8 mask correspond to footprint texels to the left and above the anchor texel. If the anchor is (2,3), the 64 bits of the returned mask are arranged spatially as follows, where each 4x4 block is assigned a bit number that matches its bit number in the footprint image texels:

        +-------------------------+-------------------------+
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 46 47 | 40 41 42 43 44 45 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 54 55 | 48 49 50 51 52 53 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 62 63 | 56 57 58 59 60 61 -- -- |
        +-------------------------+-------------------------+
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 06 07 | 00 01 02 03 04 05 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 14 15 | 08 09 10 11 12 13 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 22 23 | 16 17 18 19 20 21 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 30 31 | 24 25 26 27 28 29 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- 38 39 | 32 33 34 35 36 37 -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- | -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
        +-------------------------+-------------------------+

To accumulate coverage for each of the four footprint image texels, a shader can AND the returned mask with simple masks derived from the x and y offset values and then atomically OR the updated mask bits into the contents of the corresponding footprint texel.

        uint64_t returnedMask = (uint64_t(footprint.mask.x) | (uint64_t(footprint.mask.y) << 32));
        uint64_t rightMask    = ((0xFF >> footprint.offset.x) * 0x0101010101010101UL);
        uint64_t bottomMask   = 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUL >> (8 * footprint.offset.y);
        uint64_t bottomRight  = returnedMask & bottomMask & rightMask;
        uint64_t bottomLeft   = returnedMask & bottomMask & (~rightMask);
        uint64_t topRight     = returnedMask & (~bottomMask) & rightMask;
        uint64_t topLeft      = returnedMask & (~bottomMask) & (~rightMask);

(2) What should an application do to ensure maximum performance when accumulating footprints into an aggregate footprint image?

RESOLVED: We expect that the most common usage of this feature will be to accumulate aggregate footprint coverage, as described in the previous issue. Even if you ignore the anisotropic filtering case where the implementation may return a granularity larger than that requested by the caller, each shader invocation will need to use atomic functions to update up to four footprint image texels for each LOD accessed. Having each active shader invocation perform multiple atomic operations can be expensive, particularly when neighboring invocations will want to update the same footprint image texels.

Techniques can be used to reduce the number of atomic operations performed when accumulating coverage include:

- Have logic that detects returned footprints where all components of the returned offset vector are zero. In that case, the mask returned by the footprint function is guaranteed to be aligned with the footprint image texels and affects only a single footprint image texel.

- Have fragment shaders communicate using built-in functions from the `VK_NV_shader_subgroup_partitioned` extension or other shader subgroup extensions. If you have multiple invocations in a subgroup that need to update the same texel (x,y) in the footprint image, compute an aggregate footprint mask across all invocations in the subgroup updating that texel and have a single invocation perform an atomic operation using that aggregate mask.

- When the returned footprint spans multiple texels in the footprint image, each invocation need to perform four atomic operations. In the previous issue, we had an example that computed separate masks for “topLeft”, “topRight”, “bottomLeft”, and “bottomRight”. When the invocations in a subgroup have good locality, it might be the case the “top left” for some invocations might refer to footprint image texel (10,10), while neighbors might have their “top left” texels at (11,10), (10,11), and (11,11). If you compute separate masks for even/odd x and y values instead of left/right or top/bottom, the “odd/odd” mask for all invocations in the subgroup hold coverage for footprint image texel (11,11), which can be updated by a single atomic operation for the entire subgroup.

## Examples

TBD

## Version History

- Revision 2, 2018-09-13 (Pat Brown)

  - Add issue (2) with performance tips.

- Revision 1, 2018-08-12 (Pat Brown)

  - Initial draft

## See Also

No cross-references are available

## Document Notes

For more information, see the Vulkan Specification.

This page is a generated document. Fixes and changes should be made to the generator scripts, not directly.

## Copyright

Copyright 2014-2026 The Khronos Group Inc.

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0