Vulkan Decoder Ring

This section provides a mapping between the Vulkan term for a concept and the terminology used in other APIs. It is organized in alphabetical order by Vulkan term. If you are searching for the Vulkan equivalent of a concept used in an API you know, you can find the term you know in this list and then search the Vulkan specification for the corresponding Vulkan term.

Not everything will be a perfect 1:1 match, the goal is to give a rough idea where to start looking in the spec.

Vulkan GL,GLES DirectX Metal

buffer device address

GPU virtual address

buffer view, texel buffer

texture buffer

typed buffer SRV, typed buffer UAV

texture buffer

color attachments

color attachments

render target

color attachments or render target

command buffer

part of context, display list, NV_command_list

command list

command buffer

command pool

part of context

command allocator

command queue

conditional rendering

conditional rendering

predication

cooperative matrix

wave matrix

SIMD group matrix

depth/stencil attachment

depth Attachment and stencil Attachment

depth/stencil view

depth attachment and stencil attachment, depth render target and stencil render target

descriptor

descriptor

argument

descriptor pool

descriptor heap

heap

descriptor set

descriptor table

argument buffer

descriptor set layout binding, push descriptor

root parameter

argument in shader parameter list

device group

implicit (E.g. SLI,CrossFire)

multi-adapter device

peer group

device memory

heap

placement heap

event

split barrier

fence

fence, sync

ID3D12Fence::SetEventOnCompletion

completed handler, -[MTLCommandBuffer waitUntilComplete]

fragment shader

fragment shader

pixel shader

fragment shader or fragment function

fragment shader interlock

GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock

rasterizer order view (ROV)

raster order group

framebuffer

framebuffer object

collection of resources

MTLRenderPassDescriptor

heap

ID3D12Heap

MTLHeap

image

texture and renderbuffer

texture

texture

image layout

resource state

image tiling

image layout, swizzle

image view

texture view

render target view, depth/stencil view, shader resource view, unordered access view

texture view

interface matching (in/out)

varying (removed in GLSL 4.20)

Matching semantics

Pervertex input attributes

invocation

invocation

thread, lane

thread, lane

layer

slice

slice

logical device

context

device

device

memory type

automatically managed, texture storage hint, buffer storage

heap type, CPU page property

storage mode, CPU cache mode

multiview rendering

multiview rendering

view instancing

vertex amplification

physical device

adapter, node

device

pipeline

state and program or program pipeline

pipeline state

pipeline state

pipeline barrier, memory barrier

texture barrier, memory barrier

resource barrier

texture barrier, memory barrier

pipeline layout

root signature

queue

part of context

command queue

command queue

semaphore

fence, sync

fence

fence, event

shader module

shader object

resulting ID3DBlob from D3DCompileFromFile

shader library

shading rate attachment

shading rate image

rasterization rate map

sparse block

sparse block

tile

sparse tile

sparse image

sparse texture

reserved resource (D12), tiled resource (D11)

sparse texture

storage buffer

shader storage buffer

raw or structured buffer UAV

buffer in device address space

subgroup

subgroup

wave

SIMD-group, quadgroup

surface

HDC, GLXDrawable, EGLSurface

window

layer

swapchain

Part of HDC, GLXDrawable, EGLSurface

swapchain

layer

swapchain image

default framebuffer

drawable texture

task shader

amplification shader

object shader

tessellation control shader

tessellation control shader

hull shader

tessellation compute kernel

tessellation evaluation shader

tessellation evaluation shader

domain shader

post-tessellation vertex shader

timeline semaphore

D3D12 fence

event

transform feedback

transform feedback

stream-out

uniform buffer

uniform buffer

constant buffer views (CBV)

buffer in constant address space

workgroup

workgroup

threadgroup

threadgroup