This extension enables resources to be bound to a dedicated allocation, rather than suballocated. For any particular resource, applications can query whether a dedicated allocation is recommended, in which case using a dedicated allocation may improve the performance of access to that resource. Normal device memory allocations must support multiple resources per allocation, memory aliasing and sparse binding, which could interfere with some optimizations. Applications should query the implementation for when a dedicated allocation may be beneficial by adding a VkMemoryDedicatedRequirementsKHR structure to the pNext chain of the VkMemoryRequirements2 structure passed as the pMemoryRequirements parameter of a call to vkGetBufferMemoryRequirements2 or vkGetImageMemoryRequirements2. Certain external handle types and external images or buffers may also depend on dedicated allocations on implementations that associate image or buffer metadata with OS-level memory objects.

This extension adds a two small structures to memory requirements querying and memory allocation: a new structure that flags whether an image/buffer should have a dedicated allocation, and a structure indicating the image or buffer that an allocation will be bound to.

Promotion to Vulkan 1.1

All functionality in this extension is included in core Vulkan 1.1, with the KHR suffix omitted. The original type, enum and command names are still available as aliases of the core functionality.

Examples

    // Create an image with a dedicated allocation based on the
    // implementation's preference

    VkImageCreateInfo imageCreateInfo =
    {
        // Image creation parameters
    };

    VkImage image;
    VkResult result = vkCreateImage(
        device,
        &imageCreateInfo,
        NULL,               // pAllocator
        &image);

    VkMemoryDedicatedRequirementsKHR dedicatedRequirements =
    {
        .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MEMORY_DEDICATED_REQUIREMENTS_KHR,
        .pNext = NULL,
    };

    VkMemoryRequirements2 memoryRequirements =
    {
        .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MEMORY_REQUIREMENTS_2,
        .pNext = &dedicatedRequirements,
    };

    const VkImageMemoryRequirementsInfo2 imageRequirementsInfo =
    {
        .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_IMAGE_MEMORY_REQUIREMENTS_INFO_2,
        .pNext = NULL,
        .image = image
    };

    vkGetImageMemoryRequirements2(
        device,
        &imageRequirementsInfo,
        &memoryRequirements);

    if (dedicatedRequirements.prefersDedicatedAllocation) {
        // Allocate memory with VkMemoryDedicatedAllocateInfoKHR::image
        // pointing to the image we are allocating the memory for

        VkMemoryDedicatedAllocateInfoKHR dedicatedInfo =
        {
            .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MEMORY_DEDICATED_ALLOCATE_INFO_KHR,
            .pNext = NULL,
            .image = image,
            .buffer = VK_NULL_HANDLE,
        };

        VkMemoryAllocateInfo memoryAllocateInfo =
        {
            .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_MEMORY_ALLOCATE_INFO,
            .pNext = &dedicatedInfo,
            .allocationSize = memoryRequirements.size,
            .memoryTypeIndex = FindMemoryTypeIndex(memoryRequirements.memoryTypeBits),
        };

        VkDeviceMemory memory;
        vkAllocateMemory(
            device,
            &memoryAllocateInfo,
            NULL,               // pAllocator
            &memory);

        // Bind the image to the memory

        vkBindImageMemory(
            device,
            image,
            memory,
            0);
    } else {
        // Take the normal memory sub-allocation path
    }

VK_KHR_dedicated_allocation

Name String

VK_KHR_dedicated_allocation

Extension Type

Device extension

Registered Extension Number

128

Revision

3

Extension and Version Dependencies

VK_KHR_get_memory_requirements2

Deprecation state

• Promoted to Vulkan 1.1

Contact

• James Jones cubanismo

Other Extension Metadata

Last Modified Date

2017-09-05

IP Status

No known IP claims.

Interactions and External Dependencies

• Promoted to Vulkan 1.1 Core

Contributors

• Jeff Bolz, NVIDIA
• Faith Ekstrand, Intel