Loader Description

Overview

The Loader implements the main VK library (e.g. “vulkan.dll” on Windows and “libvulkan.so” on Linux). It handles layer management and driver management. The loader fully supports multi-gpu operation. As part of this, it dispatches API calls to the correct driver, and to the correct layers, based on the GPU object selected by the application.

The loader's driver management includes finding driver libraries and loading them. When a driver is initialized, the loader sets up its dispatch tables, using a very light-weight “trampoline” mechanism. To do so, it reserves space for a pointer in API objects (see below for more information about this).

The loader‘s layer management includes finding layer libraries and activating them as requested. The loader correctly sets up each activated layer, and its own dispatch tables in order to support all activated layers. Each active layer can intercept a subset of the full API entrypoints. A layer which doesn’t intercept a given entrypoint will be skipped for that entrypoint. The loader supports layers that operate on multiple GPUs.

ICD discovery

See file LinuxICDs.txt and WindowsICDs.txt for description of how the loader finds ICD driver libraries.

Interface to driver (ICD)

• vkCreateInstance exported
• vkGetGlobalExtensionProperties exported
• vkGetDeviceProcAddr exported and returns valid function pointers for all the VK API entrypoints
• vkGetInstanceProcAddr exported and returns valid function pointers for all the VK API entrypoints
• all objects created by ICD can be cast to (VK_LAYER_DISPATCH_TABLE **) where the loader will replace the first entry with a pointer to the dispatch table which is owned by the loader. This implies three things for ICD drivers:
  1. The ICD must return a pointer for the opaque object handle
  2. This pointer points to a regular C structure with the first entry being a pointer. Note: for any C++ ICD's that implement VK objects directly as C++ classes. The C++ compiler may put a vtable at offset zero, if your class is virtual. In this case use a regular C structure (see below).
  3. The reservedForLoader.loaderMagic member must be initialized with ICD_LOADER_MAGIC, as follows:

  #include "vkIcd.h"

  struct {
        VK_LOADER_DATA reservedForLoader; // Reserve space for pointer to loader's dispatch table
        myObjectClass myObj;               // Your driver's C++ class
  } vkObj;

  vkObj alloc_icd_obj()
  {
      vkObj *newObj = alloc_obj();
      ...
      // Initialize pointer to loader's dispatch table with ICD_LOADER_MAGIC
      set_loader_magic_value(newObj);
      ...
      return newObj;
  }

Additional Notes:

• The ICD may or may not implement a dispatch table.
• ICD entrypoints can be named anything including the offcial vk name such as vkCreateDevice(). However, beware of interposing by dynamic OS library loaders if the offical names are used. On Linux, if offical names are used, the ICD library must be linked with -Bsymbolic.

Layer library discovery

See file LinuxICDs.txt and WindowsICDs.txt for description of how the loader finds layer libraries.

Interface to layer libraries

TBD