## 8.9. Fragment Shaders

Fragment shaders are invoked as the result of rasterization in a graphics pipeline. Each fragment shader invocation operates on a single fragment and its associated data. With few exceptions, fragment shaders do not have access to any data associated with other fragments and are considered to execute in isolation of fragment shader invocations associated with other fragments.

### 8.9.1. Fragment Shader Execution

For each fragment generated by rasterization, a fragment shader may be invoked. A fragment shader must not be invoked if the Early Per-Fragment Tests cause it to have no coverage.

Furthermore, if it is determined that a fragment generated as the result of rasterizing a first primitive will have its outputs entirely overwritten by a fragment generated as the result of rasterizing a second primitive in the same subpass, and the fragment shader used for the fragment has no other side effects, then the fragment shader may not be executed for the fragment from the first primitive.

Relative ordering of execution of different fragment shader invocations is not defined.

The number of fragment shader invocations produced per-pixel is determined as follows:

- If per-sample shading is enabled, the fragment shader is invoked once per covered sample.
- Otherwise, the fragment shader is invoked at least once per fragment but no more than once per covered sample.

In addition to the conditions outlined above for the invocation of a fragment shader, a fragment shader invocation may be produced as a helper invocation. A helper invocation is a fragment shader invocation that is created solely for the purposes of evaluating derivatives for use in non-helper fragment shader invocations. Stores and atomics performed by helper invocations must not have any effect on memory, and values returned by atomic instructions in helper invocations are undefined.

### 8.9.2. Early Fragment Tests

An explicit control is provided to allow fragment shaders to enable early fragment tests. If the fragment shader specifies the `EarlyFragmentTests` `OpExecutionMode`, the per-fragment tests described in Early Fragment Test Mode are performed prior to fragment shader execution. Otherwise, they are performed after fragment shader execution.