Introduced earlier this month with the Vulkan API 1.4.325 spec update was the introduction of the untyped pointers extension with VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers and SPIR-V’s underlying SPV_KHR_untyped_pointers for providing an alternative option to strongly-typed pointers. As of yesterday the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” is now supporting this untyped pointers extension.
The Vulkan untyped pointers functionality is described in the VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers extension spec as:
“It provides an alternative to strongly-typed pointers. Untyped pointers allow shader authors to reinterpret data accessed through memory and atomic instructions versus the data type declared in the variable without extra conversion instructions. Untyped pointers also provide an efficient translation from templated load/store operations in high-level languages and simplify shaders that support operations, but not storage, on smaller data types (e.g. 16-bit floating-point types).”
This untyped pointers support can provide greater flexibility and allow for better higher-level language support
When Vulkan 1.4.325 was published there was immediate support ready for the Intel ANV and NVIDIA NVK drivers while the RADV merge request was pending.
As of yesterday that merge request has landed in Mesa 25.3 for implementing VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers across all AMD Radeon GPUs supported by this open-source driver.
