Rasterization of compute shaders

Abstract

Described are compiler algorithms that partition a compute shader program into maximal-size regions, called thread-loops. The algorithms may remove original barrier-based synchronization yet the thus-transformed shader program remains semantically equivalent to the original shader program (i.e., the transformed shader program is correct). Moreover, the transformed shader program is amenable to optimization via existing compiler technology, and can be executed efficiently by CPU thread(s). A Dispatch call can be load-balanced on a CPU by assigning single or multiple CPU threads to execute thread blocks. In addition, the number of concurrently executing thread blocks do not overload the CPU.