@inproceedings{DevillersKurtenackerMembarthetal.2025, author = {Devillers, Hugo and Kurtenacker, Matthias and Membarth, Richard and Lemme, Stefan and Kenzel, Michael and Yazici, {\"O}mercan and Slusallek, Philipp}, title = {No More Shading Languages: Compiling C++ to Vulkan Shaders}, booktitle = {High-Performance Graphics - Symposium Papers}, editor = {Knoll, Aaron and Peters, Christoph}, publisher = {The Eurographics Association}, address = {Goslar}, isbn = {978-3-03868-291-2}, url = {https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/hpg20251167}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.2312/hpg.20251167}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Graphics APIs have traditionally relied on shading languages, however, these languages have a number of fundamental defects and limitations. By contrast, GPU compute platforms offer powerful, feature-rich languages suitable for heterogeneous compute. We propose reframing shading languages as embedded domain-specific languages, layered on top of a more general language like C++, doing away with traditional limitations on pointers, functions, and recursion, to the benefit of programmability. This represents a significant compilation challenge because the limitations of shaders are reflected in their lower-level representations. We present the Vcc compiler, which allows conventional C and C++ code to run as Vulkan shaders. Our compiler is complemented by a simple shading library and exposes GPU particulars as intrinsics and annotations. We evaluate the performance of our compiler using a selection of benchmarks, including a real-time path tracer, achieving competitive performance compared to their native CUDA counterparts.}, language = {en} }