Editing Mesa (computer graphics) (section)

==== SPIR-V ====
SPIR-V is a certain version of the [[Standard Portable Intermediate Representation]]. The idea is, that graphics applications output SPIR-V instead of GLSL. In contrast to the latter, SPIR-V is binary to avoid implementation differences between GLSL compiler frontends of different driver implementations, as this has been a major source of application incompatibilities and bugs. Also SPIR-V binary usually also passed through some general optimizations. SPIR-V's binary representation also offers some degree of obfuscation, which might appeal to some software vendors as a form of intellectual property protection; however, SPIR-V contains ample information for reflection and [https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Cross tools exist that translate SPIR-V back into high quality, human readable high level code]. A UMD needs only apply optimizations, that are specific to the supported hardware.

* [https://www.khronos.org/registry/spir-v/specs/1.0/SPIRV.html SPIR-V Specification (Provisional)]