GPU-AV Shader Instrumentation

Shader instrumentation is the process of taking an existing SPIR-V file from the application and injecting additional SPIR-V instructions. When we can't statically determine the value that will be used in a shader, GPU-AV adds logic to detect the value and if it catches an invalid instruction, it will not actually execute it.

Expected behavior during error

When we find an error in the SPIR-V at runtime there are 3 possible behaviour the layer can take

1. Still execute the instruction as normal (chance it will crash/hang everything)
2. Don't execute the instruction (works well if there is not return value to worry about)
3. Try and call a “safe default” version of the instruction

For things such as ray tracing, we decided to go with 2 as it would have the least side effects. The main goal is to make sure we get the error message to the user.

How Descriptor Indexing is instrumented

As an exaxmple, if the incoming shader was

#version 450
#extension GL_EXT_nonuniform_qualifier : enable

layout(set = 0, binding = 1) uniform sampler2D tex[];
layout(location = 0) out vec4 uFragColor;
layout(location = 0) in flat uint index;

void main(){
   uFragColor = texture(tex[index], vec2(0, 0));
}

it is first ran through a custom pass (InstBindlessCheckPass) to inject logic to call a known function, this will look like after

vec4 value;
if (inst_bindless_descriptor(/*...*/)) {
    value = texture(tex[index], vec2(0.0));
} else {
    value = vec4(0.0);
}
uFragColor = value;

The next step is to add the inst_bindless_descriptor function into the SPIR-V.

Currently, all these functions are found in gpu/shaders/instrumentation

bool inst_bindless_descriptor(const uint inst_num, const uvec4 stage_info, const uint desc_set,
                              const uint binding, const uint desc_index, const uint byte_offset) {
    // logic
    return no_error_found;
}

which is compiled with glslang's --no-link option. This is done offline and the module is found in the generated directory.

Note: This uses Linkage which is not technically valid Vulkan Shader SPIR-V, while debugging the output of the SPIR-V passes, some tools might complain

Now with the two modules, at runtime GPU-AV will call into gpuav::spirv::Module::LinkFunction which will match up the function arguments and create the final shader which looks like

#version 460
#extension GL_EXT_buffer_reference : require
#extension GL_EXT_nonuniform_qualifier : require

layout(set = 0, binding = 1) uniform sampler2D tex[];

layout(location = 0) out vec4 uFragColor;
layout(location = 0) flat in uint index;

bool inst_bindless_descriptor(uint inst_num, uvec4 stage_info, uint desc_set,
                              uint binding, uint desc_index, uint byte_offset) {
    // logic
    return no_error_found;
}

void main()
{
    vec4 value;
    if (inst_bindless_descriptor(2, 42, uvec4(4, gl_FragCoord.xy, 0), 0, 1, index, 0)) {
        value = texture(tex[index], vec2(0.0));
    } else {
        value = vec4(0.0);
    }
    uFragColor = value;
}

How runtime spirv-val for single instructions is instrumented (Currently in proposal status)

There are a set of VUID-RuntimeSpirv VUs that could be validated in spirv-val statically if it was using OpConstant.

Since it is likely these are variables decided at runtime, we will need to check in GPU-AV.

Luckily because these are usually bound to a single instruction, it is a lighter check

Example - OpRayQueryInitializeKHR

An example of a VU we need to validate at GPU-AV time

For OpRayQueryInitializeKHR instructions, the RayTmin operand must be less than or equal to the RayTmax operand

the instruction operands look like

OpRayQueryInitializeKHR %ray_query %as %flags %cull_mask %ray_origin %ray_tmin %ray_dir %ray_tmax

The first step will be adding logic to wrap every call of this instruction to look like

if (inst_ray_query_initialize(/* copy of arguments */)) {
    rayQueryInitializeEXT(/* original arguments */)
}

From here, we will use the same gpuav::spirv::Module::LinkFunction flow to add the logic and link in where needed

The SPIR-V before and after adding the conditional check looks like

// before
// traceRayEXT(a, b, c)
%L1 = OpLabel
%value = OpLoad %x
OpRayQueryInitializeKHR %value %param
OpReturn


// after
// if (IsValid(a, b, c)) {
//   traceRayEXT(a, b, c)
// }

%L1 = OpLabel
%value = OpLoad %x // for simplicity, can stay hoisted out
%compare = OpSomeCompareInstruction
OpSelectionMerge %L3 None
OpBranchConditional %compare %L2 %L3

    %L2 = OpLabel
    OpRayQueryInitializeKHR %value %param
    OpBranch %L3

%L3 = OpLabel
OpReturn