4 ms·

This is certainly interesting and informative for somebody who already kinda knows how the code->gpu->screen pipeline works and wants to know how it's made fast

This is certainly interesting and informative for somebody who already kinda knows how the code->gpu->screen pipeline works and wants to know how it's made fast, but I'm still missing some of the "pre"/"post" background for how/when the request to the shading system is made and what happens after the GPU is done. I just started poking at doing computer graphics "from scratch" (working my way up from ray tracers now). I know that modern graphics systems are huge and ultimately your C++ library or whatever is just gonna flip some bits on graphics-card registers/busses or something, but I was really hoping for some background on "here's a bit of code that asks the shader to add depth to a triangle" and then how that gets mapped back to the screen.

monocasa 8y ago
https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics-pipeline-2011-index/ https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-... is a great intro to GPU architecture that I think answers your question indirectly. It's mainly just command FIFOs, semaphores, and cache flushes. Vulkan's API is a pretty good high level approximation of current architecture.
greggman 8y ago
I think these might help. yes they are WebGL but the concepts are the same http://webglfundamentals.org http://webglfundamentals.org
sillysaurus3 8y ago
Start here. Work through all 5 parts. http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles You'll have to implement each part yourself to understand them. It's not something that can be skimmed. But it's so worth it. After that, most of the mystery of graphics will be gone. (But not the thrill.) One of the most frustrating aspects of learning graphics programming was that most resources immediately start talking about theory. Partial derivatives of uv's and xy's, gradient values and mipmap selection, and you're just trying to draw a damn picture on a triangle. Learning from working code and implementing it yourself is a better teacher.
deepaksurti 8y ago
You can look at MIAOW which is an open source implementation of the AMD Southern Islands GPU ISA.[0] The RTL can be found here [1] The best part is the white paper [2], PDF I had been looking around for information similar to ECS[3], building a GPU from first principles and MIAOW is one step closer that. [0] http://miaowgpu.org/index.html http://miaowgpu.org/index.html [1] https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow [2] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow/files/MIAOW_Architecture_Whitepaper.pdf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/VerticalResearchGroup... [3] https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/

monocasa 8y ago

https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics-pipeline-2011-index/ https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-... is a great intro to GPU architecture that I think answers your question indirectly. It's mainly just command FIFOs, semaphores, and cache flushes. Vulkan's API is a pretty good high level approximation of current architecture.

greggman 8y ago

I think these might help. yes they are WebGL but the concepts are the same http://webglfundamentals.org http://webglfundamentals.org

sillysaurus3 8y ago

Start here. Work through all 5 parts. http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles You'll have to implement each part yourself to understand them. It's not something that can be skimmed. But it's so worth it. After that, most of the mystery of graphics will be gone. (But not the thrill.) One of the most frustrating aspects of learning graphics programming was that most resources immediately start talking about theory. Partial derivatives of uv's and xy's, gradient values and mipmap selection, and you're just trying to draw a damn picture on a triangle. Learning from working code and implementing it yourself is a better teacher.

deepaksurti 8y ago

You can look at MIAOW which is an open source implementation of the AMD Southern Islands GPU ISA.[0] The RTL can be found here [1] The best part is the white paper [2], PDF I had been looking around for information similar to ECS[3], building a GPU from first principles and MIAOW is one step closer that. [0] http://miaowgpu.org/index.html http://miaowgpu.org/index.html [1] https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow [2] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow/files/MIAOW_Architecture_Whitepaper.pdf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/VerticalResearchGroup... [3] https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/