Compute shader (CS) stage

The compute shader (CS) stage provides high-speed general-purpose computing, and takes advantage of the large numbers of parallel processors on the graphics processing unit (GPU). The compute shader stage provides memory sharing and thread synchronization features to allow more effective parallel programming methods.

A compute shader can run on many threads in parallel.

A compute shader is an HLSL-programmable shader stage that expands Direct3D beyond graphics programming. Compute shader technology is also known as DirectCompute technology. For more info, also see Compute shader overview.

Related topics

Compute pipeline Graphics pipeline