SPIRV and Metal `TextureBufferType` support about slang HOT 4 OPEN

How does HLSL/dxc handle texture buffer types that exceeds 4 floats?

from slang.

Looking at the HLSL spec, it seems a tbuffer is treated as a u32 format texture, and loads from the buffer is lowered into texture fetches + bit casts. Seems like a lowering pass is in order to support this on spirv and metal. I doubt it offers any actual benefit over the use of a StructuredBuffer.

from slang.

I doubt it offers any actual benefit over the use of a StructuredBuffer.

tbuffer predates StructuredBuffer, likely is only kept around for legacy reasons, although tbuffer does use cbuffer packing rules from what I gather, so that may make a difference (for the worse in some senarios)...

from slang.

How does HLSL/dxc handle texture buffer types that exceeds 4 floats?

likely as you said here: "loads from the buffer is lowered into texture fetches + bit casts"

the logic should be reasonably simple regardless since Slang knows the offset of every field, therefore meaning all accesses are fairly obvious in byte offset.

from slang.