Compute shaders are invoked via vkCmdDispatch
and
vkCmdDispatchIndirect
commands.
In general, they have access to similar resources as shader stages executing
as part of a graphics pipeline.
Compute workloads are formed from groups of work items called workgroups and
processed by the compute shader in the current compute pipeline.
A workgroup is a collection of shader invocations that execute the same
shader, potentially in parallel.
Compute shaders execute in global workgroups which are divided into a
number of local workgroups with a size that can be set by assigning a
value to the LocalSize
execution mode or via an object decorated by the
WorkgroupSize
decoration.
An invocation within a local workgroup can share data with other members of
the local workgroup through shared variables and issue memory and control
flow barriers to synchronize with other members of the local workgroup.