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SPIR-V
The compiled binary format that Vulkan shaders are shipped in, independent of any GPU or source language.
Rather than feeding raw shader source to the driver, Vulkan consumes SPIR-V — a standardized binary intermediate representation. Shaders written in languages like GLSL or HLSL are compiled ahead of time into SPIR-V, which the GPU driver then finishes compiling for the specific hardware. This decouples the shading language from the driver and enables offline validation (e.g. 'SPIR-V 1.6 accepted').
See also
- shaderA small program that runs on the GPU to compute part of how a scene is drawn.
- SSA IRA compiler's internal representation where every variable is assigned exactly once, making code easy to analyze and optimize.
- robustBufferAccessA GPU safety feature that makes out-of-bounds buffer reads/writes in a shader return harmless results instead of crashing.