```
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------   ___                      _ _            --------------------
-----------------  |_ _|_ __ ___  _ __   ___| | | ___ _ __  --------------------
-----------------   | || '_ ` _ \| '_ \ / _ \ | |/ _ \ '__| --------------------
-----------------   | || | | | | | |_) |  __/ | |  __/ |    --------------------
-----------------  |___|_| |_| |_| .__/ \___|_|_|\___|_|    --------------------
-----------------                |_|                        --------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

![Impeller](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flutter/assets-for-api-docs//5da33067f5cfc7f177d9c460d618397aad9082ca/assets/engine/impeller/showcase.avif)

Impeller is a rendering runtime for Flutter with the following objectives:

* **Predictable Performance**: All shader compilation and reflection is
  performed offline at build time. All pipeline state objects are built upfront.
  Caching is explicit and under the control of the engine.
* **Instrumentable**: All graphics resources (textures, buffers, pipeline state
  objects, etc..) are tagged and labeled. Animations can be captured and
  persisted to disk without affecting per-frame rendering performance.
* **Portable**: Not tied to a specific client rendering API. Shaders are
  authored once and converted as necessary.
* **Uses Modern Graphics APIs Effectively**: Makes heavy use of (but doesn’t
  depend on) features available in Modern APIs like Metal and Vulkan.
* **Makes Effective Use of Concurrency**: Can distribute single-frame workloads
  across multiple threads if necessary.

## Project Organization

Impeller is a meta-framework. While a user of Impeller may choose to include the
whole enchilada (in `//impeller/:impeller`), the various sub-frameworks have
clearly defined responsibilities and adhere to a strict hierarchy.

Impeller itself may not depend on anything in `//flutter` except `//flutter/fml`
and `flutter/display_list`. FML is a base library for C++ projects and Impeller
implements the display list dispatcher interface to make it easy for Flutter to
swap the renderer with Impeller. Impeller is meant to be used by the Flow
(`//flutter/flow`) subsystem. Hence the name. The tessellator and geometry
libraries are exceptions - they unconditionally may not depend on anything from
`//flutter`.

An overview of the major sub-frameworks, their responsibilities, and, relative
states of completion:

* **`//impeller/compiler`**: The offline shader compiler. Takes GLSL 4.60 shader
  source code and converts it into a backend specific shader representation
  (like Metal Shading Language). It also generates C++ bindings that callers can
  include as a GN `source_set`s so there is no runtime shader reflection either.
  The target is an executable called `impellerc` which is never shipped into the
  binary or as an artifact.
* **`//impeller/renderer`**: The very lowest level of the renderer that is still
  backend agnostic. Allows users to build a renderer from scratch with few
  restrictions. Has utilities for creating allocators, generating pipeline state
  objects from bindings generated by `//impeller/compiler`, setting up render
  passes, managing jumbo uniform-buffers, tessellators, etc..
  * **`//impeller/renderer/backend`**: Contains all the implementation details
      for a specific client rendering API. The interfaces in these targets are
      meant to be private for non-WSI user targets. No Impeller sub-frameworks
      may depend on these targets.
* **`//impeller/geometry`**: All (or, most of) the math! This C++ mathematics
  library is used extensively by Impeller and its clients. The reasonably
  interesting bit about this library is that all types can be used
  interchangeably in device and host memory. Various Impeller subsystems
  understand these types and can take care of packing and alignment concerns
  w.r.t these types.
* **`//impeller/playground`**: When working with graphics APIs, it is often
  necessary to visually verify rendering results as a specific feature is being
  worked upon. Moreover, it is useful to attach frame debuggers or profilers to
  specific test cases. The playground framework provides Google Test fixtures
  that open the current state of various rendering related objects in a window
  in which rendering results can be visualized, or, to which frame debuggers can
  be attached. Most Impeller sub-frameworks that have a test harness also have a
  custom playground subclass. This sub-framework is only meant to provide
  utilities for tests and will not be compiled into any shipping binary.
* **`//impeller/entity`:** Sits one level above `//impeller/renderer` and
  provides a framework for building 2D renderers. Most of the pipeline state
  objects generated from shaders authored at build time reside in this
  framework. The render-pass optimization and pass-rewriting framework also
  resides there. This allows authoring composable 2D rendering optimizations
  (like collapsing passes, or, eliding them completely).
* **`//impeller/display_list`**: The replacement for `//impeller/aiks` to serve
  in the integration of Impeller in `//flutter/flow`. This is pending graphics
  package agnosticism in the Impeller interface. This sub-framework primarily
  provides a custom implementation of the `flutter::DisplayListDispatcher` that
  forwards Flutter rendering intent to Impeller.
* **`//impeller/typographer`**: Contains a backend agnostic interface for
  rendering typefaces. While Impeller does **not** do any text layout or
  shaping, it does render shaped glyph runs. The application specifies these
  glyph runs to Impeller using the Typographer subsystem.
  * **`//impeller/typographer/backend`**: Contains code that interfaces with an
    underlying (usually platform-specific) library or toolkit to render glyphs
    in typefaces into texture atlases. Impeller will then reference these glyphs
    when rendering shaped glyph runs. No Impeller sub-frameworks may depend on
    these targets. There may be multiple typographer backends.
* **`//impeller/base`**: Contains C++ utilities that are used throughout the
  Impeller family of frameworks. Ideally, these should go in `//flutter/fml` but
  their use is probably not widespread enough to at this time.
* **`//fixtures`**: Contains test fixtures used by the various test harnesses.
  This depends on `//flutter/testing`.
* **`//impeller/tools`**: Contains all GN rules and python scripts for working
  with Impeller. These include GN rules processing GLSL shaders, including
  reflected shader information as source set targets, and, including compiled
  shader intermediate representations into the final executable as binary blobs
  for easier packaging.
* **`//impeller/toolkit`**: Contains Impeller agnostic toolkits that provide
  more ergonomic  wrappers around certain APIs like EGL. Toolkits must be
  dependency free so that an external component using a toolkit doesn't have to
  pull in a significant portion of Impeller itself.
* **`//impeller/shader_archive`**: Create a persistent library of shader blobs.
  This is primarily used by rendering backends that don't have the notion of a
  shader library. In Impeller, all shaders are packaged into a single library
  that contains a manifest of the shaders in the library along with the
  pre-compiled shaders themselves. Unlike Metal, backends like OpenGL ES and
  Vulkan don't have such a concept. For these backends, `//impeller/blobcat` is
  used to create a single shader library to be packaged with the engine.

## The Offline Shader Compilation Pipeline

* Shaders are authored once in GLSL 4.60. This choice of shading language is
  consistent across all backends. Shader code resides in the Impeller source
  tree like any other source file.
* At build time, the Impeller Shader Compiler (`impellerc`) converts the GLSL
  into SPIRV. No optimizations are performed on the generated SPIRV at this
  stage. This is to preserve all debugging and instrumentation information.
* Using the SPIRV, a backend specific transpiler converts the SPIRV to the
  appropriate high-level shading language. This is controlled using flags to the
  `impellerc`.
* All the files generated in the high-level shading language are compiled,
  optimized, and linked into a single binary blob.
* The binary blob containing the compiled and optimized high-level shading
  language is included as a hex dump (see `xxd.py`) into a C source file with a
  generated GN target. Executable targets that want to include the compiled code
  in their binaries just need to depend on the generated GN target. This eases
  any shader packaging concerns.
* In parallel, the SPIRV is processed by a reflector. This produces C++
  translation units that allow for the easy creation of pipeline state objects
  at runtime. The headers for these translation units include any structs (with
  appropriate padding and alignment) such that uniform data as well as vertex
  information can be specified to the shader without having to deal with
  bindings, vertex descriptors, etc.. This also makes iterating on shaders
  easier as changes to the shader interface lead to compile time errors.
* The C++ translation units generated from reflected shader information are made
  available to callers as a generated GN target that callers may use if
  necessary. It is possible for callers to perform reflection at runtime but
  there are no Impeller components that do this currently.

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    glsl_460[GLSL ES 4.60] -- Stage 1 Compiler --> spirv[SPIRV]

    spirv -- SPIRV Optimizer --> optimized_spirv[Optimized SPIRV]

    optimized_spirv -- Metal Stage 2 Compiler --> metal_sources[Metal Shader Sources]
    metal_sources -- Metal Linker --> metal_library[Metal Library]

    optimized_spirv -- Vulkan Stage 2 Compiler --> vulkan_spirv[Vulkan SPIRV]
    vulkan_spirv -- Shader Archiver --> vulkan_shader_archive[Vulkan Shader Archive]

    optimized_spirv -- GLSL ES Stage 2 Compiler --> glsl_es_100[GLSL ES 1.00]
    glsl_es_100 -- Shader Archiver --> gles_shader_archive[OpenGL ES Shader Archive]

    spirv -- Reflector --> cxx_sources[C++ Sources]
    cxx_sources -- Ninja Build --> cxx_library[C++ Library]
```

## Try Impeller in Flutter

Impeller is available under the `--enable-impeller` flag on iOS, Android, and
macOS Desktop. This flag can be specified to `flutter run`.

If the application needs to be launched with Impeller enabled without using the
Flutter tool, follow the platform specific steps below.

### iOS

Impeller is the only rendering engine available on iOS. The legacy renderer has been removed.

### Android

Impeller is the **default** on Android. Impeller will attempt to use Vulkan first and then
fall back to OpenGL rendering depending on device capabilities.

To explicitly opt out of using Impeller, add the following to your `AndroidManifest.xml`
under the `<application>` tag.

> [!CAUTION]
> The ability to disable Impeller is going to go away in a future release. Please [file
> an issue](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/new/choose) if you need to do this
> in your application.

```xml
  <meta-data
    android:name="io.flutter.embedding.android.EnableImpeller"
    android:value="false" />
```

During development, to try Impeller with OpenGL in your application, add the following
to your `AndroidManifest.xml` file under the `<application>` tag:

> [!Warning]
> Selecting the Impeller backend this way will only work in `debug` and `profile`
> runtime modes.

```xml
  <meta-data
    android:name="io.flutter.embedding.android.ImpellerBackend"
    android:value="opengles" />
```

### macOS Desktop

Impeller is in preview on macOS Desktop.

To your `Info.plist` file, add under the top-level `<dict>` tag:

```xml
  <key>FLTEnableImpeller</key>
  <true/>
```

### Custom Embedders

Impeller is in preview on [custom embedders](https://docs.flutter.dev/embedded). It is **not**
enabled by default.

To enable it Impeller in your application, pass the `--enable-impeller=true` command line
argument to [`FlutterProjectArgs.command_line_argv`](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/63980cb25ba5b70122f2814406989eb5fa8ef5a1/engine/src/flutter/shell/platform/embedder/embedder.h#L2388)
during application initialization.

Impeller does not require any other modifications in the embedder.

## Embedding Standalone Impeller

Impeller is designed to work best when used by Flutter. Most of the teams
efforts go into being great at that use-case. But, standalone Impeller can be
used to perform accelerated rendering in most environments without any Flutter
dependencies.

Impeller provides a standalone SDK. The SDK exposes a single-header C API with
no platform dependencies. [Prebuilts for major platforms, documentation,
examples, are available](toolkit/interop/README.md).

## Documentation, References, and Additional Reading

* [Frequently Asked Questions](docs/faq.md)
* [Baby's First Triangle](docs/babys_first_triangle.md)
* [Impellers Coordinate System](docs/coordinate_system.md)
* [How to Setup Xcode for GPU Frame Captures with Metal.](docs/xcode_frame_capture.md)
* [How to Setup RenderDoc Frame Captures with Vulkan.](docs/renderdoc_frame_capture.md)
* [Learning to Read GPU Frame Captures](docs/read_frame_captures.md)
* [How to Enable Metal Validation for Command Line Apps.](docs/metal_validation.md)
* [How Impeller Works Around The Lack of Uniform Buffers in Open GL ES 2.0.](docs/ubo_gles2.md)
* [Guidance for writing efficient shaders](docs/shader_optimization.md)
* [How color blending works in Impeller](docs/blending.md)
* [Enabling Vulkan Validation Layers on Android](docs/android_validation_layers.md)
* [Important Benchmarks](docs/benchmarks.md)
* [Threading in the Vulkan Backend](docs/vulkan_threading.md)
* [iOS CPU Profiling](docs/ios_cpu_profile.md)
* [OpenGL ES Development Setup on macOS](docs/opengles_development_setup.md)
* [Android CPU Profiling](docs/android_cpu_profile.md)
* [Android Rendering Backend Selection](docs/android.md)
* [Using Impeller as a Standalone Rendering Library (with OpenGL ES)](docs/standalone_gles.md)
* [Glossary](docs/glossary.md)
