spir-v is an intermediate representation language created in 2015.
| #4040on PLDB | 9Years Old |
Abstract. SPIR-V is a new platform-independent intermediate language. It is a self-contained, fully specified, binary format for representing graphical-shader stages and compute kernels for multiple APIs. Physically, it is a stream of 32-bit words. Logically, it is a header and a linear stream of instructions. These encode, first, a set of annotations and decorations, and second a collection of functions. Each function encodes a control-flow graph (CFG) of basic blocks, with additional instructions to preserve source-code structured flow control. Load/store instructions are used to access declared variables, which includes all input/output (IO). Intermediate results bypassing load/store use single static-assignment (SSA) representation. Data objects are represented logically, with hierarchical type information: There is no flattening of aggregates or assignment to physical register banks, etc. Selectable addressing models establish whether general pointers may be used, or if memory access is purely logical.