Compute shader

Compute shaders

Compute shaders refer to compute kernels written in a shading language. These shaders share execution units with vertex shaders and pixel shaders on GPUs, an example of GPGPU operation. They may be used in graphics pipelines for purposes such as additional stages in animation or lighting algorithms (e.g. tiled forward rendering) or be used for a non-graphics purpose. Some rendering APIs allow compute shaders to easily share data resources with the graphics pipeline, which eases the integration of graphics and compute.