Rust and SPIR-V float rounding semantics are different
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Description
There is a footgun when trying to share code between CPU and GPU. Rust and SPIR-V have different semantics when rounding floats:
Rust:
- Rust’s built-in conversion using
astruncates the fractional part, effectively rounding toward zero. - For example, 1743028479.999... becomes 1743028479.
Rust Language Reference
SPIR-V:
- SPIR-V uses the
OpConvertFToSinstruction for converting floating-point values to integers. Here is where it happens in rust-gpu. - It rounds using round-to-nearest-even, which can round 1743028479.999... up to 1743028480.
SPIR-V Specification
fn main() {
let x = 1743028480i32;
let y = (x as f64) * (1.0 / (i32::MAX as f64));
// Without explicit rounding, differs:
let without = (y * (i32::MAX as f64)) as i32;
// Using `trunc()` forces Rust’s truncation:
let with = (y * (i32::MAX as f64)).trunc() as i32;
println!("x = {}. Without rounding = {}. With trunc() = {}.", x, without, with);
}
I'm not sure which should be the default. If it is Rust's we'll want to polyfill on the spir-v side. Might be good to have this user controlled in any case.
Originally posted by @LegNeato in https://github.com/Rust-GPU/rust-gpu/discussions/228#discussioncomment-12784276
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- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
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- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start at crates/rustc_codegen_spirv/src/builder/builder_methods.rs around the referenced OpConvertFToS generation, then compare the Rust reference and SPIR-V specification linked in the issue. Determine the intended default or user-controlled behavior for float-to-integer conversion and validate it against the provided example. Done means the chosen semantics are explicitly agreed and the CPU/GPU behavior is aligned or deliberately configurable.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- compilers
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100