C Specification

To allocate memory objects, call:

VkResult vkAllocateMemory(
    VkDevice                                    device,
    const VkMemoryAllocateInfo*                 pAllocateInfo,
    const VkAllocationCallbacks*                pAllocator,
    VkDeviceMemory*                             pMemory);

Parameters

  • device is the logical device that owns the memory.

  • pAllocateInfo is a pointer to an instance of the VkMemoryAllocateInfo structure describing parameters of the allocation. A successful returned allocation must use the requested parameters — no substitution is permitted by the implementation.

  • pAllocator controls host memory allocation as described in the Memory Allocation chapter.

  • pMemory is a pointer to a VkDeviceMemory handle in which information about the allocated memory is returned.

Description

Allocations returned by vkAllocateMemory are guaranteed to meet any alignment requirement of the implementation. For example, if an implementation requires 128 byte alignment for images and 64 byte alignment for buffers, the device memory returned through this mechanism would be 128-byte aligned. This ensures that applications can correctly suballocate objects of different types (with potentially different alignment requirements) in the same memory object.

When memory is allocated, its contents are undefined.

The maximum number of valid memory allocations that can exist simultaneously within a VkDevice may be restricted by implementation- or platform-dependent limits. If a call to vkAllocateMemory would cause the total number of allocations to exceed these limits, such a call will fail and must return VK_ERROR_TOO_MANY_OBJECTS. The maxMemoryAllocationCount feature describes the number of allocations that can exist simultaneously before encountering these internal limits.

Some platforms may have a limit on the maximum size of a single allocation. For example, certain systems may fail to create allocations with a size greater than or equal to 4GB. Such a limit is implementation-dependent, and if such a failure occurs then the error VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_DEVICE_MEMORY must be returned.

Valid Usage
Valid Usage (Implicit)

  • device must be a valid VkDevice handle

  • pAllocateInfo must be a valid pointer to a valid VkMemoryAllocateInfo structure

  • If pAllocator is not NULL, pAllocator must be a valid pointer to a valid VkAllocationCallbacks structure

  • pMemory must be a valid pointer to a VkDeviceMemory handle

Return Codes
On success, this command returns

  • VK_SUCCESS

On failure, this command returns

  • VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_HOST_MEMORY

  • VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_DEVICE_MEMORY

  • VK_ERROR_TOO_MANY_OBJECTS

See Also

VkAllocationCallbacks, VkDevice, VkDeviceMemory, VkMemoryAllocateInfo

Document Notes

For more information, see the Vulkan Specification at URL

https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/html/vkspec.html#vkAllocateMemory

This page is extracted from the Vulkan Specification. Fixes and changes should be made to the Specification, not directly.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2014-2018 Khronos Group. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.