Roadmap

The current status of this project is past 1.0 (official release for Windows 10 Creator's Update Edition). We've continued to make improvements beyond the components that were made available with the corresponding SDK.

The shader language supported in this project HLSL 2016 (ie shader model 6.0) is intended to match the existing HLSL shader model 5.1 to simplify initial adoption and testing.

Support for advanced language features such as those supported by clang would appear in a future shader model.

The long term plan for this project was originally announced last March at GDC 2016. The presentation video is here. A PDF of the slides is also available on that page.

Here is a summary of the key points:

Backlog of candidate language features

The following language features could be added to the front-end with no impact on core functionality, drivers, or hardware:

• Enums
• Bit-fields
• Language Standard Annotations
• References
• Unions
• Function Templates
• Visbility: public, private, protected, friend
• Generic resource addressing

Stretch language features

These features are under consideration for longer timeframes depending on user requests.

• constexpr
• Assertions
• Function pointers (limited)
• Lambdas (limited)
• Virtuals
• Constructors, destructors, etc.
• Extern functions (linking)

Out-of-scope language features

There are currently no plans to implement these features in the language.

• Exceptions
• A stack
• Recursion
• STL Containers
• C99/stdlib compatibility
• Garbage collection

Candidate hardware features

These are examples of changes to the language that require to changes in the hardware, and so will require updates to the underlying implementation.

• Explicit float16/half type
• Blender intrinsics
• More atomic operations
• Stereo system values (SV_XXXX)
• Programmable blending (aka RT Read)
• Input of arbitrary structures
• More control over IEEE behavior
• Future GPU features