Re: [9fans] Drawterm GPU (was: Software philosophy)

[sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de>]

22.08.2021 20:25:12 ori@eigenstate.org:

> Quoth sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de>:
>>
>> 22.08.2021 18:41:06 ori@eigenstate.org:
>> Basically do software rendering on the GPU?
>
> Yes. Or software neural net evaluation on the GPU.
> Or software video decoding on the GPU. Or software
> image transforms on the GPU. Or software signal
> processing on the GPU.
>
> If there's an interface to be selected, it needs
> to be tractable to implement, *and* general purpose
> enough for everything that wants to use it.
>
>> Well, it's totally possible. Even Nanite (the new system in Unreal 
>> Engine
>> 5) has its own rasterizer and I believe even its own base pass. Also
>> Lumen does software rendering for global illumination.
>>
>> But for serious 3d AAA stuff we'd have to consider: Lumen is for 
>> next-gen
>> GPUs and Nanite for newer GPUs. We'll never reach their quality in
>> realtime if we don't use the GPU features (built-in rasterizer, ...) 
>> to
>> have enough free power for crazy software calculation.
>
> By the time any code is written, next-gen GPUs will be
> previous-gen GPUs.
>
> General compute is what any hardware you buy a few years
> from now will be doing -- and it's far more intersting
> in terms of what capabilities it allows.
>
>> I like that /dev/compute approach, but may I suggest putting it below
>> another directory /dev/gpu/compute so we have the ability to add
>> /dev/gpu/{vertex,geometry,fragment,tessellation,pixel} later?
>
> I think supporting those is a cost we should not pay. It's
> fundamentally solving a less general problem, and adds a
> lot of complexity for the potential of a small performance
> boost.
>
> We already have zero people sinking time into the slim
> interface; sinking time into a fatter interface seems
> like a bad idea.

Gotcha.

Maybe I'll find some time to implement some kind of gpufs or /dev/gpu (if 
it's general purpose I'd suggest renaming compute to gpu since "compute" 
could be anything. The computer does compute, wow.).

sirjofri

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