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subgroup
A small hardware bundle of shader threads on a GPU that all run in lockstep together.
GPUs execute shaders in fixed-size hardware groups — called warps, wavefronts, or subgroups — where a batch of invocations step through the same instructions at once. Special subgroup operations let those threads share data or vote directly, without going through slower memory. This is much faster than cross-thread coordination through buffers, and functions like electing a leader (subgroupElect) or rotating values rely on it.
See also
- subgroup quadA subgroup operation restricted to a 2x2 block of neighbouring pixels.
- topologyHow a GPU interprets a list of vertices — as separate points, connected lines, or triangles.
- storage imageAn image that shaders can both read from and write to directly, like a 2D array in memory.