Chromium Experimental Texel Buffers

The texel_buffers language feature allows to store WebGPU plain color format data with a GPUBuffer, supporting format conversion on load and store operations. Texel buffers roughly translate to buffer textures in Vulkan (Dim = Buffer), texture_buffer<format> in Metal Shading Language, and typed UAV/SRV buffer views in HLSL/D3D12.

Status

The feature is actively under review for adoption in WGSL. Although a [proposal] (https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/blob/main/proposals/texel-buffers.md) has been accepted, implementations must not expose the feature without an explicit draft-enable flag. Discussion is ongoing in a [Texel Buffers Issue] (https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/issues/162).

Syntax

A new texel_buffer type, parameterized by the color format and the access mode: texel_buffer<Format, Access>.

• Format must be a WebGPU plain color format.
• Access is either read or read_write.

Texel buffers overload textureDimensions, textureLoad and textureStore built-in functions.

Example usage

@group(0) @binding(0) var myBuffer : texel_buffer<rgba8unorm, read_write>;

@compute @workgroup_size(32)
fn computeMain(@builtin(global_invocation_id) threadId : vec3<u32>) {
    let length = textureDimensions(myBuffer);
    if (threadId.x >= length) {
        return;
    }

    var value = textureLoad(myBuffer, threadId.x);
    value = value * value;
    textureStore(myBuffer, threadId.x, value);
}