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10.11 Layered Textures

Layered textures are known in the graphics world as texture arrays, because they enable 1D or 2D textures to be arranged as arrays accessed by an integer index. The main advantage of layered textures over vanilla 2D or 3D textures is that they support larger extents within the slices. There is no performance advantage to using layered textures.

Layered textures are laid out in memory differently than 2D or 3D textures, in such a way that 2D or 3D textures will not perform as well if they use the layout optimized for layered textures. As a result, when creating the CUDA array, you must specify cudaArrayLayered to cudaMalloc3DArray() or specify CUDA_ARRAY3D_LAYERED to cuArray3DCreate().

The simpleLayeredTexture sample in the SDK illustrates how to use layered textures.

1D Layered Textures

The 1D layered texture size limits may be queried by calling cuDeviceGetAttribute() with CU_DEVICE_ATTRIBUTE_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE1D_LAYERED_WIDTH and CU_DEVICE_ATTRIBUTE_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE1D_LAYERED_LAYERS; or by calling cudaGetDeviceProperties() and examining cudaDeviceProp.maxTexture1DLayered.

2D Layered Textures

The 2D layered texture size limits may be queried by calling cuDeviceGetAttribute() with CU_DEVICE_ATTRIBUTE_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE2D_LAYERED_WIDTH, and CU_DEVICE_ATTRIBUTE_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE2D_LAYERED_HEIGHT, or CU_DEVICE_ATTRIBUTE_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE2D_LAYERED_LAYERS`; or by calling cudaGetDeviceProperties() and examining cudaDeviceProp.maxTexture2DLayered.

The layered texture size limits may be queried by calling cudaGetDeviceProperties() and examining cudaDeviceProp.maxTexture2DLayered.