Module vulkano::buffer

Location in memory that contains data.

All buffers are guaranteed to be accessible from the GPU.

High-level wrappers

The low level implementation of a buffer is UnsafeBuffer. However, the vulkano library provides high-level wrappers around that type that are specialized depending on the way you are going to use it:

• CpuAccessBuffer designates a buffer located in RAM and whose content can be written by your application.
• ImmutableBuffer designates a buffer in video memory and whose content can only be written once.

If are a beginner, you are strongly encouraged to use one of these wrappers.

Buffers usage

Buffers have the following usages:

• Can contain arbitrary data that can be copied from/to other buffers and images.
• Can be read and modified from a shader.
• Can be used as a source of vertices and indices.
• Can be used as a source of list of models for draw indirect commands.

The correct Usage flags have to be passed when you create a buffer. Trying to use a buffer in a way that wasn't specified when you created it will result in an error.

Accessing a buffer from a shader can be done in the following ways:

• As a uniform buffer. Uniform buffers are read-only.
• As a storage buffer. Storage buffers can be read and written.
• As a uniform texel buffer. Contrary to a uniform buffer, the data is interpreted by the GPU and can be for example normalized.
• As a storage texel buffer. Additionnally, some data formats can be modified with atomic operations.

Using uniform/storage texel buffers requires creating a buffer view. See the view module for how to create a buffer view.

Data uploads

One of the major usages of buffers is to upload data to other buffers and to images. When you create a buffer or an image in non-host-visible memory, one of the only way to upload data to it is write the data in a temporary buffer and ask the device to copy from the temporary buffer to the real buffer.

TODO: add example of this

Reexports

pub use self::cpu_access::CpuAccessibleBuffer;

pub use self::device_local::DeviceLocalBuffer;

pub use self::immutable::ImmutableBuffer;

pub use self::sys::BufferCreationError;

pub use self::sys::Usage as BufferUsage;

pub use self::traits::Buffer;

pub use self::traits::TypedBuffer;

pub use self::view::BufferView;

Modules

cpu_access	Buffer whose content is accessible to the CPU.
device_local	Buffer whose content is read-written by the GPU only.
immutable	Buffer that is written once then read for as long as it is alive.
sys	Low level implementation of buffers.
traits
view	View of a buffer, in order to use it as a uniform texel buffer or storage texel buffer.

Structs

BufferSlice

A subpart of a buffer.