OpenGL Insights

The GLSL Shader Interfaces

Christophe Riccio

5.1 Introduction

The shader system is a central module of a graphics engine, providing flexibility,

performance, and reliability to an application. In this chapter we explore various

aspects of the GLSL shader interfaces to improve its quality.

These interfaces are the elements of the language that expose buffers and textures

within a shader stage. They allow communication between shader stages and between

the application and the shader stages. This includes input interfaces, output inter-

faces, interface blocks, atomic counters, samplers, and image units [Kessenich 12].

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