SPIR-V
SPIR-V (Standard Portable Intermediate Representation) is a binary intermediate language for representing graphical shader stages and compute kernels for heterogeneous parallel computing. It serves as a vendor-neutral, platform-independent format that enables high-level shading languages like GLSL and HLSL to be compiled into a portable bytecode, which can then be optimized and translated into native GPU instructions by drivers. This facilitates cross-platform graphics and compute programming, particularly in APIs like Vulkan and OpenCL.
Developers should learn SPIR-V when working with low-level graphics APIs such as Vulkan, where it is the primary shader format, or in OpenCL for compute kernels, as it provides performance benefits through pre-compilation and optimization. It is essential for cross-platform GPU development, enabling shader portability across different hardware vendors and operating systems, and is used in tools like shader compilers (e.g., glslang) and debuggers to analyze and manipulate shader code efficiently.