Name Strings

SPV_INTEL_pause

Contact

To report problems with this extension, please open an issue at:

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Registry

Contributors

  • Ben Ashbaugh, Intel

  • Gregory Lueck, Intel

  • Mateusz Belicki, Intel

  • Victor Mustya, Intel

Notice

Copyright (c) 2026 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Status

  • Complete

Version

Last Modified Date

2026-10-21

Revision

1

Dependencies

This extension is written against the SPIR-V Specification, Version 1.6 Revision 8.

This extension requires SPIR-V 1.0.

Overview

This extension adds an instruction to pause execution of the current invocation for a requested number of clocks. The pause duration is approximate, and the maximum pause duration is implementation-defined.

Extension Name

To use this extension within a SPIR-V module, the following OpExtension must be present in the module:

OpExtension "SPV_INTEL_pause"

Modifications to the SPIR-V Specification, Version 1.6

Capabilities

Modify Section 3.2.30, "Capability", adding the following row to the Capability table:

Capability Implicitly Declares

6266

PauseINTEL
Enables OpPauseINTEL.

Instructions

Add the following instruction to Section 3.3.1, "Miscellaneous Instructions":

OpPauseINTEL

Pauses execution of the current invocation for the duration requested by Clocks. Clocks specifies a number of clocks to pause. The pause duration is approximate, and the maximum allowed pause duration is implementation-defined. If Clocks exceeds this maximum, it is treated as the maximum for the purpose of the pause.

The observed wall-clock duration of a pause may vary between executions with the same Clocks value, even within a single invocation.

The pause may also affect other invocations in the same subgroup. Whether it does so is implementation-defined.

The operation is a hint to the implementation, that doesn’t change the observable behavior of the program. The implementation can choose to ignore the pause request.

Clocks must be a 32-bit integer type scalar. It is interpreted as unsigned.

Capability:
PauseINTEL

2

6267

<id>
Clocks

Revision History

Rev Date Author Changes

1

2026-10-21

Victor Mustya

Initial version