Shader resource view (SRV) and Unordered Access view (UAV)
Shader resource views typically wrap textures in a format that the shaders can access them. An unordered access view provides similar functionality, but enables the reading and writing to the texture (or other resource) in any order.
Wrapping a single texture is probably the simplest form of shader resource view. More complex examples would be a collection of subresources (individual arrays, planes, or colors from a mipmapped texture), 3D textures, 1D texture color gradients, and so on.
Unordered access views are slightly more costly in terms of performance, but allow, for example, a texture to be written to at the same time that it is being read from. This enables the updated texture to be re-used by the graphics pipeline for some other purpose. Shader resource views are for read only use (which is the most common use of resources).
Related topics
Feedback
Submit and view feedback for