KosmicKrisp workarounds

This file documents the relevant issues found in either Metal, the MSL compiler or any other component we have no control over that needed to be worked around to accomplish Vulkan conformance.

All workarounds must be documented here and no code comment info should be provided other than the name KK_WORKAROUND_#.

Once a workaround was removed from the code, the code comment will be removed but the documentation here will be kept.

Template

Use the following template to create documentation for a new workaround:

KK_WORKAROUND_#
---------------
| macOS version:
| Metal ticket:
| Metal ticket status:
| CTS test failure/crash:
| Comments:
| Log:

macOS version needs to have the OS version with which it was found.

Metal ticket needs to be either the Metal ticket number with the GitLab handle of the user that reported the ticket or Unreported.

Metal ticket status needs to be either Fixed in macOS # (Build hash),

Waiting resolution or empty if unreported. If Apple reported that the issue was fixed, but no user has verified the fix, append [Untested]. CTS test failure/crash (remove failure or crash based on test behavior) needs to be the name of the test or test family the issue can be reproduced with.

Comments needs to include as much information on the issue and how the workaround fixes it.

Log needs to have the dates (yyyy-mm-dd, the only correct date format) with info on what was updated.

Workarounds

KK_WORKAROUND_10

macOS version: 26.4.1
Metal ticket: Not reported
Metal ticket status:
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.subgroups.arithmetic.compute.subgroupinclusive*_vec4
Comments:

See comment https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/41186#note_3470793

In short, certain ior operations can be and will be turned into bcsel before reaching NIR to MSL. However, the MSL compiler seems to incorrectly handle bcsel and the compiled shader misbehaves while the ior version does not. This is worked around by adding a known true value to the conditional of the bcsel.

Log:
2026-05-14: Workaround implemented

KK_WORKAROUND_9

macOS version: 26.4.1
Metal ticket: Not reported
Metal ticket status:
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.reconvergence.maximal.compute.nesting*
Comments:

Metal seems to re-order the sole break case of a loop such that execution reconverges earlier than expected.

From the above mentioned CTS test, consider the following, which is the only code path that breaks within a loop:

if (subgroupElect()) {
   outputC.loc[gl_LocalInvocationIndex]++;
   outputB.b[(outLoc++)*invocationStride + gl_LocalInvocationIndex] =
      subgroupBallot(true);
   break;
}

The test expects the subgroupBallot to yield just one bit set for the thread picked by subgroupElect; however, Metal returns the full 0xFFFFFFFF, presumably because it re-ordered the operations to after the loop.

To work around this, we add a trivial, always-true runtime condition to the break to ensure that the prior logic is not re-ordered.

KK_WORKAROUND_8

macOS version: 26.4.1
Metal ticket: FB22579201 (@squidbus)
Metal ticket status: Waiting resolution
CTS test failure: N/A
Comments:

Metal GPU capture uses currentAllocatedSize to create an internal buffer over MTLHeap for the purpose of capturing its contents.

Suppose we have a heap whose size is under the memory page size. Under native ARM execution, both the heap size and currentAllocatedSize will be aligned up to 16K. However, it has been observed that under Rosetta 2, size will be aligned up to 4K but currentAllocatedSize will still be aligned up to 16K.

These two in combination mean that, when GPU capture attempts to create buffers for these small heaps, it will fail, as currentAllocatedSize is larger than the heap size. This will cause Metal validation layer errors if they are enabled, and attempting to take a GPU capture will crash the application.

This workaround ensures that under Rosetta 2, heap sizes will be aligned to a minimum of 16K, prevening this scenario from occurring.

Log:
2026-04-27: Workaround implemented

KK_WORKAROUND_7

macOS version: 26.0.1
Metal ticket: Not reported
Metal ticket status:
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.renderpasses.renderpass2.depth_stencil_resolve.image_2d_*testing_stencil_samplemask
Comments:

Metal seems to ignore sample_mask out for cases for the stencil attachment where we have no color attachments, a multisample depth_stencil attachment with at least 2 samples and a fragment shader that only writes the depth and a static sample_mask out.

My conclusion is that they may try to prematurely optimize by doing early fragment testing disregarding completely the sample_mask out and applying the value to all stencil samples.

The failing tests do something along the lines of, start render pass with depth_stencil cleared to 0.0f and 0 respectively, if depth test passes set stencil to 1. Sample mask out is 1 (first sample). Draw framebuffer size square with 0.5f depth. End render pass storing values. Start render pass loading the previous output but if depth passes stencil will be set to 255. Sample mask out is 2 (second sample). Draw framebuffer size square with 0.5f depth.

In a similar fashion to 2 workarounds below this one, we do a conditional discard at the end discarding fragments not covered by the coverage_mask.

Log:
2026-02-05: Workaround implemented

KK_WORKAROUND_6

macOS version: 26.0.1
Metal ticket: Not reported
Metal ticket status:
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.spirv_assembly.instruction.*.float16.opcompositeinsert.*
Comments:

Metal does not respect its own Memory Coherency Model (MSL spec 4.8). From the spec: By default, memory in the device address space has threadgroup coherence.

If we have a single thread compute dispatch so that we do (simplified version):

for (...) {
   value = ssbo_data[0]; // ssbo_data is a device buffer
   ...
   ssbo_data[0] = new_value;
}

ssbo_data[0] will not correctly store/load the values so the value written in iteration 0, will not be available in iteration 1. The workaround to this issue is marking the device memory pointer through which the memory is accessed as coherent so that the value is stored and loaded correctly. Hopefully this does not affect performance much.

Log:
2025-12-08: Workaround implemented and reported to Apple

KK_WORKAROUND_5

macOS version: 26.0.1
Metal ticket: Not reported
Metal ticket status:
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.fragment_operations.early_fragment.discard_no_early_fragment_tests_depth
Comments:

Fragment shaders that have side effects (like writing to a buffer) will be prematurely discarded if there is a discard_fragment that will always execute. To work around this, we just make the discard “optional” by moving it inside a run time conditional that will always be true (such as is the fragment a helper?). This tricks the MSL compiler into not optimizing it into a premature discard.

Log:
2025-12-01: Workaround implemented

KK_WORKAROUND_4

macOS version: 26.0.1
Metal ticket: FB21124215 (@aitor)
Metal ticket status: Waiting resolution
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.draw.renderpass.shader_invocation.helper_invocation* and few others
Comments:

simd_is_helper_thread() will always return true if the shader was started as a non-helper thread, even after discard_fragment() is called. The workaround is to have a variable tracking this state and update it when the fragment is discarded. This issue is present in M1 and M2 chips.

Log:
2025-11-22: Workaround implemented and reported to Apple

KK_WORKAROUND_3

macOS version: 15.4.x
Metal ticket: FB20113490 (@aitor)
Metal ticket status: Waiting resolution
CTS test failure: dEQP-VK.subgroups.ballot_other.*.subgroupballotfindlsb, dEQP-VK.subgroups.arithmetic.graphics.*, dEQP-VK.subgroups.shader_quad_control.divergent_condition
Comments:

simd_ballot within a conditional block does not seem to behave as documented in the MSL specification. For example, the following code blocks misbehave:

bool execute = (gl_SubGroupInvocation & 1u) != 0u;
if (execute)
   temp = simd_ballot(true); /* <- This may return all active threads... */
else
   temp = 2u;
if (simd_is_first())
   temp = 3u;
else
   temp = simd_ballot(true); /* <- This will return all active threads... */

This appears to also apply to quad_any and quad_all, and likely the simd equivalents as well.

The way to fix this is to use simd_or instead:

bool execute = (gl_SubGroupInvocation & 1u) != 0u;
if (execute)
   temp = simd_or(1 << gl_SubGroupInvocation);
else
   temp = 2u;

Alternatively, the conditional can be changed to include simd_ballot(true):

bool execute = (gl_SubGroupInvocation & 1u) != 0u;
if (execute && (ulong)simd_ballot(true))
   temp = simd_ballot(true);
else
   temp = 2u;
Log:
2025-09-09: Workaround implemented and reported to Apple
2026-04-28: Workaround updated to expand to all ballot/vote ops.

KK_WORKAROUND_2

macOS version: 15.4.x
Metal ticket: FB21065475 (@aitor)
Metal ticket status: Waiting resolution
CTS test crash: dEQP-VK.graphicsfuzz.cov-nested-loops-never-change-array-element-one and dEQP-VK.graphicsfuzz.disc-and-add-in-func-in-loop
Comments:

We need to loop to infinite since MSL compiler crashes if we have something like (simplified version):

while (true) {
   if (some_conditional) {
      break_loop = true;
   } else {
      break_loop = false;
   }
   if (break_loop) {
      break;
   }
}

The issue I believe is that some_conditional wouldn’t change the value no matter in which iteration we are (something like fetching the same value from a buffer) and the MSL compiler doesn’t seem to like that much to the point it crashes.

The implemented solution is to change the while(true) loop with for (uint64_t no_crash = 0u; no_crash < UINT64_MAX; ++no_crash), which tricks the MSL compiler into believing we are not doing an infinite loop (wink wink).

Log:
2025-09-08: Workaround implemented

KK_WORKAROUND_1

macOS version: 15.4.x
Metal ticket: FB17604106 (@aitor)
Metal ticket status: [Untested] Fixed in macOS 26 Beta (25A5279m)
CTS test crash: dEQP-VK.glsl.indexing.tmp_array.vec3_dynamic_loop_write_dynamic_loop_read_fragment
Comments:

Uninitialized local scratch variable causes the MSL compiler to crash. Initialize scratch to avoid issue.

Log:
2025-05-14: Workaround implemented and reported to Apple
2025-06-14: Apple reported back saying it is now fixed in macOS 26 Beta (Build 25A5279m)