D099 - Translated shaders are executed on a device

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-26

Translated shaders are dispatched on a real Vulkan device and their output read back. Vulkan is loaded at run time, and one loader, instance and device serve the whole process. A missing device is reported as a skip, loudly, by the check gate.

Why: a validator says a module is well-formed, not that it computes the right thing. Linking Vulkan would make the build need an SDK. Loading and tearing down the loader and device per dispatch faults intermittently and costs a second a time.

Rejected:

• Validation only: well-formed and wrong passes.
• Linking the Vulkan loader: the build depends on an installed SDK.
• A device per dispatch: intermittent faults and most of the runtime.