D3D12CacheListener

This is a command line ETW listener (similar to PresentMon) that listens to D3D ETW events to measure efficacy of advanced shader delivery PSDBs.

To use, simply run as administrator, or as a user in the Performance Log Users group. Hit rates for D3D12 apps will be printed to console.

Usage

D3D12CacheListener.exe [-v|--verbose] [-h|--help]

• -v, --verbose — dump the full ASDInit payload for every ASDInit event, not just when the identity check fails.
• -h, --help — show help text.

Diagnosing identity failures

When an ASDInit event reports Step: IdentityCheck, the PSDB was rejected because the application identity recorded in the database did not match the running application or the installed compiler. The tool decodes the event payload and presents it as the three comparisons the identity check actually reasons about, marking each failure inline:

  --- ASDInit diagnostics (schemaVersion 3) ---

  Application match    D3D sees now                        PSDB was built for
    Name             : "Contoso Racer"                     "contoso racer"  <-- mismatch (differs only by case)
    Engine           : "Unreal Engine"                     "UnrealEngine"   <-- mismatch
    Version          : 1.0.0.0                             1.0.0.0
    Engine version   : 5.3.0.0                             5.3.0.0
    Executable       : "C:\Games\Contoso\bin\contoso.exe"  "contoso.exe"

  ABI compatibility    driver                              PSDB compiler
    Adapter family   : "NVIDIA_Ada"                        "NVIDIA_Ampere"  <-- mismatch
    Compiler version : 1.2.3.4                             1.2.0.0
    ABI version      : [3.0.0.0, 5.0.0.0]                  7.0.0.0          <-- out of range

  Application profile
    Driver expects   : 2.1.0.0
    PSDB resolved    : 3.0.0.0                             <-- major version mismatch

  Sources
    Application desc : SetApplicationIdentity (2)
    Default PSDB     : ShaderCacheRegistration (3)

• Application match compares what D3D understands the running application to be (from API calls or registry information) against what was passed to the compiler when the PSDB was built.
• ABI compatibility compares what the driver in the current process reports it supports against the compiler that produced the PSDB.
• Application profile compares the profile version the driver expects against the profile the compiler resolved — that is, whether the compiler recognized the application description and applied a profile at all.
• Sources records where the application description and the default PSDB path came from. These are only present at schema version 3 and later.

Version fields are four packed 16-bit components and are printed in a.b.c.d notation. The application profile version is compared on its leading two components only. Columns are sized to fit their content, and values too long for a column — full executable paths, most often — wrap onto a continuation line. If none of the checks fires, the tool says so explicitly — that means the runtime enforced a check this tool does not yet model.