VkPhysicalDeviceLimits

VkPhysicalDeviceLimits is a structure in the Vulkan graphics API that describes the hardware limits of a physical device. It is a member of VkPhysicalDeviceProperties, exposed when querying a physical device's capabilities. The limits object provides concrete bounds that influence resource creation, performance, and feature support, including maximum image dimensions, buffer sizes, descriptor counts, alignment constraints, and compute and memory characteristics.

Applications query these limits by calling vkGetPhysicalDeviceProperties, filling a VkPhysicalDeviceProperties structure; the limits field then contains the VkPhysicalDeviceLimits data. The information is used during initialization to size buffers and images, validate resource layouts, and select feature paths that fit within device capabilities.

Typical categories of fields describe: image and memory limits (such as maximum 2D dimensions, maximum array layers, maximum buffer ranges, alignment granularity, and total memory allocations), descriptor set and shader limits (per-stage and per-descriptor counts for uniform, storage, and sampled resources), push constants size, and compute-related limits (work group sizes and counts).

Because Vulkan devices vary widely, querying limits is essential for portability and correctness. Developers should compare required resources and shader resources against VkPhysicalDeviceLimits and fall back to alternative code paths or feature enabling where needed.