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ID3DX10ThreadPump interface

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Used to execute tasks asynchronously, and created with D3DX10CreateThreadPump. There are several D3DX10 APIs that can optionally take a thread pump as a parameter, such as D3DX10CreateTextureFromFile and D3DX10CompileFromFile (see remarks for complete list). If the thread pump is passed into these APIs, they will execute asynchronously on a separate thread pump thread. The advantage to doing this is that it can make loading and processing large amounts of data happen without seeing a noticable slow down in performance on screen.

Members

The ID3DX10ThreadPump interface inherits from the IUnknown interface. ID3DX10ThreadPump also has these types of members:

Methods

The ID3DX10ThreadPump interface has these methods.

Method Description
AddWorkItem Add a work item to the thread pump.
GetQueueStatus Get the number of items in each of the three queues inside the thread pump.
GetWorkItemCount Get the number of work items currently in the thread pump.
ProcessDeviceWorkItems Set work items to the device after they have finished loading and processing. When the thread pump has finished loading and processing a resource or shader, it will hold it in a queue until this API is called, at which point the processed items will be set to the device. This is useful for controlling the amount of processing that is spent on binding resources to the device for each frame. See remarks.
PurgeAllItems Clear all work items from the thread pump.
WaitForAllItems Wait for all work items in the thread pump to finish.

 

Remarks

The thread pump loads and processes data in a 3 step process. It goes:

  1. Load and decompress the data with a Data Loader. The data loader object has three methods that the thread pump will call internally as it is loading and decompressing the data: ID3DX10DataLoader::Load, ID3DX10DataLoader::Decompress, and ID3DX10DataLoader::Destroy. The specific functionality of these three APIs differs depending on the type of data being loaded and decompressed. The data loader interface can also be inherited and its APIs can be changed if one is loading a data file defined in one's own custom format.
  2. Process the data with a Data Processor. The data processor object has three methods that the thread pump will call internally as it is processing the data: ID3DX10DataProcessor::Process, ID3DX10DataProcessor::CreateDeviceObject, and ID3DX10DataProcessor::Destroy. The way it processes the data will be different depending on the type of data. For example, if the data is a texture stored as a JPEG, then ID3DX10DataProcessor::Process will do JPEG decompression to get the image's raw image bits. If the data is a shader, then ID3DX10DataProcessor::Process will compile the HLSL into bytecode. After the data has been processed a device object will be created for that data (with ID3DX10DataProcessor::CreateDeviceObject) and the object will be added to a queue of device objects. The data processor interface can also be inherited and its APIs can be changed if one is processing a data file defined in one's own custom format.
  3. Bind the device object to the device. This is done when one's application calls ID3DX10ThreadPump::ProcessDeviceWorkItems, which will bind a specified number of objects in the queue of device objects to the device.

The thread pump can be used to load data in one of two ways: by calling an API that takes a thread pump as a parameter, such as D3DX10CreateTextureFromFile and D3DX10CompileFromFile, or by calling ID3DX10ThreadPump::AddWorkItem. In the case of the APIs that take a thread pump, the data loader and data processor are created internally. In the case of AddWorkItem, the data loader and data processor must be created beforehand and are then passed into AddWorkItem. D3DX10 provides a set of APIs for creating data loaders and data processors that have functionality for loading and processing common data formats (see remarks for complete list of APIs). For custom data formats, the data loader and data processor interfaces must be inherited and their methods must be redefined.

The thread pump object takes up a substantial amount of resources, so generally only one should be created per application.

Built-in D3DX10 data loaders

Description
D3DX10CreateAsyncFileLoader Create a file loader asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncMemoryLoader Create a data loader asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncResourceLoader Create a resource loader asynchronously.

 

Built-in D3DX10 data processors

Description
D3DX10CreateAsyncTextureProcessor Create a data processor to be used with a thread pump. This API is similar to D3DX10CreateAsyncTextureInfoProcessor but it also loads the texture.
D3DX10CreateAsyncTextureInfoProcessor Create a data processor to be used with a thread pump.
D3DX10CreateAsyncShaderCompilerProcessor Compile a shader and create a data processor asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncEffectCompilerProcessor Create an effect with a data processor asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncEffectCreateProcessor Create an effect pool asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncEffectPoolCreateProcessor Create a data processor asynchronously.
D3DX10CreateAsyncShaderPreprocessProcessor Create a data processor for a shader asynchronously.

 

APIs that take a thread pump as a parameter.

Description
D3DX10CompileFromFile Compile a shader from a file.
D3DX10CompileFromMemory Compile a shader residing in memory.
D3DX10CompileFromResource Compile a shader from a resource.
D3DX10CreateEffectFromFile Create an effect from a file.
D3DX10CreateEffectFromMemory Create an effect from memory.
D3DX10CreateEffectFromResource Create an effect from a resource.
D3DX10CreateEffectPoolFromFile Create an effect pool from a file.
D3DX10CreateEffectPoolFromMemory Create an effect pool from a file residing in memory.
D3DX10CreateEffectPoolFromResource Create an effect pool from a resource.
D3DX10PreprocessShaderFromFile Create a shader from a file without compiling it.
D3DX10PreprocessShaderFromMemory Create a shader from memory without compiling it.
D3DX10PreprocessShaderFromResource Create a shader from a resource without compiling it.
D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromFile Create a shader-resource view from a file.
D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromMemory Create a shader-resource view from a file in memory.
D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromResource Create a shader-resource view from a resource.
D3DX10GetImageInfoFromFile Retrieves information about a given image file.
D3DX10GetImageInfoFromMemory Get information about an image already loaded into memory.
D3DX10GetImageInfoFromResource Retrieves information about a given image in a resource.
D3DX10CreateTextureFromFile Create a texture resource from a file.
D3DX10CreateTextureFromMemory Create a texture resource from a file residing in system memory.
D3DX10CreateTextureFromResource Create a texture resource from another resource.

 

Requirements

Requirement Value
Header
D3DX10.h
Library
D3DX10.lib

See also

D3DX Interfaces