Robust pipeline cache serialization
zeux.ioWhen writing a Vulkan renderer, one has to learn a lot of new concepts. Some of them are easier to deal with than others, and one of the pretty straightforward additions is the pipeline cache. To make sure pipeline creation is as efficient as possible, you need to create a pipeline cache and use it whenever you need to create a new pipeline. To make sure subsequent runs of your application don’t have to spend the time repeatedly compiling the shader microcode, you need to save the pipeline cache data to a file, and load it next time your application starts. How hard can this possibly be?
It is no secret that we tend to have a bit of a problem with shader permutations in real-time graphics. It’s such a bad problem that it not only affects graphics programmers, but also trickles down to all of the other content creators that use an engine. If you don’t believe me, just go ahead and search for “unreal compiling shaders meme” on Google images and see what comes up. There are many great ones to choose from, but personally I am a bit partial to this one: