Interface Usage Restrictions

Current GPU hardware does not support varying slot information at shader runtime. As a consequence interface references cannot be modified within a conditional expression such as an if or switch statement.

The following shader code illustrates when this restriction will occur and a possible alternate approach.

Given the following interface declarations:

interface A
{
    float GetRatio();
    bool IsGood();
};

interface B
{
    float GetValue();
};

A arrayA[6];
B arrayB[6];

Given the following class declarations:

class C1 : A
{
    float var;
    float GetRatio() { return 1.0f; }
    bool IsGood() { return true; }
};

class C2 : C1, B
{
    float GetRatio() { return C1::GetRatio() * 0.33f; }
    float GetValue() { return 5.0f; }
    bool IsGood() { return false; }
};

class C3 : B
{
    float var;
    float GetValue() { return -1.0f; }
};

class C4 : A, B
{
    float var;
    float GetRatio() { return var; }
    float GetValue() { return var * 2.0f; }
    bool IsGood() { return var > 0.0f; }
};

An interface reference cannot be modified within the conditional expression (an if statement):

float main() : wicked
{
    float rev;
    {
        A a = arrayA[0];
        for( uint i = 0; i < 6; ++i )
        {
            if( arrayA[i].IsGood() )
            {
                // This forces the loop to be unrolled, 
                // since the slot information is changing.
                a = arrayA[i]; 
                rev -= arrayA[i-2].GetRatio();
            }
            else
            {
                // This causes an error since the compiler is
                // unable to determine the interface slot
                rev += arrayB[i].GetValue() + a.GetRatio(); 
            }
        }
    }
    return rev;
}

Given the same interface and class declarations, you could use an index to provide the same functionality and avoid the forced loop unroll.

float main() : wicked
{
    float rev;
    {
        uint index = 0;
        for( uint i = 0; i < 6; ++i )
        {
            if( arrayA[i].IsGood() )
            {
                index = i;
                rev -= arrayA[i-2].GetRatio();
            }
            else
            {
                rev += arrayB[i].GetValue() + arrayA[index].GetRatio();
            }
        }
    }
    return rev;
}

Related topics

Dynamic Linking