dneto

dneto, 4 months ago to random

Vulkan shader maximal reconvergence extension has been released.

This is a deeply technical issue. But your intuition about how subgroups work is wrong.
This cuts across APIs, but Vulkan is doing something about it.

https://www.khronos.org/blog/khronos-releases-maximal-reconvergence-and-quad-control-extensions-for-vulkan-and-spir-v

dneto, 1 year ago to random

Hey, would you like to help academic research stress-testing GPU memory models? Do you have Chrome?

PhD student Reese Levine at
UC Santa Cruz is collecting data and could use your help by running some WebGPU code that stress-tests the memory behaviour of GPUs.

Takes about 20 minutes:
1.) Head to https://gpuharbor.ucsc.edu/webgpu-mem-testing/tuning/ (must be on Chrome)
2.) Optionally turn on a developer flag (to get more granular info about what GPU you have)
3.) Run the Tune/Conform action
4.) Submit your results!

dneto, 10 months ago to random

Heyo, here's a writing tip:

Use "i.e." when you want to say "that is to say", like a definition.
Even numbers are divisible by two, i.e. X is even if there is some integer K such that X = 2 * K.

Use "e.g." when you want to give an illustrative example.
Fruit are often colourful, e.g. bananas.

dneto, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to webgpu

Want to quickly check the #WebGPU support in your browser? Visit

https://webgpureport.org/

It will show the adapter and device info, including the limits and features.

(Edit: Fixed the link)

dneto, 5 months ago to random

TIL for a long time the US banned Mexican avocadoes. The ban was lifted in 1997.

That explains a few things.
Growing up, avocadoes were pretty rare. Now they're pretty common.

Also the boomers telling the millennials to stop eating avocado toast to save money to buy a house.

dneto, 1 year ago to random

NEWS FROM CANADA

We're coming up on an important 20th anniversary.
Same-sex marriage in Ontario
was authoritatively established on June 10, 2003. This was the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Ontario

The issue was pushed to the forefront in part by weddings at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, a few blocks from where I lived.

I think we're all better for it.

dneto, 1 month ago to Canada

NEWS FROM CANADA

The federal government announced their budget. It raises the inclusion rate on capital gains above a gain of 250K$, on businesses and trusts. (Ooh, multiple qualifiers there...) From 50% to 67%.

Cue the "brain drain" Cassandra's, just like the 1990s.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-entrepreneurs-investors-capital-gains-tax-reaction-1.7176837

#canada #capoli

dneto, 1 month ago to random

Yes, friends, today I wrote an email beginning with "Yikes!"

dneto, 9 hours ago to llvm

So the thing about LLVM IR is, in reality it's a family of accidental and informally defined dialects. Every LLVM-based compiler for a particular machine target refines the input module down to its own idiosyncratic dialect.

Consequently there's way more latitude for confusion and bugs than you'd initially guess.

Try using an i65 type in an x86 backend. When I did that years ago it sailed right through and generated nonsense code.

#llvm #compilers

dneto, 1 month ago to random

I watched Dune part 1 last night.
I kept thinking: this is just Star Wars, right?

dneto, 1 month ago to random

Today I learned there going to be a new time zone... created for the moon.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-moon-will-get-its-own-time-zone-called-coordinated-lunar-time-under-nasas-lead-180984076/

dneto, 27 days ago to random

SSD stands for "solid state drive".

That makes no sense. What is being driven?
I know it's from hard drive,. or floppy drive, where a disk was being spun.

dneto, 26 days ago to random

Interesting article on a novel legal theory about Section 230.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse-hidden-in-section-230-all-along-that-could-enable-adversarial-interoperability/

dneto, 7 days ago to random

Programming languages are cultural artifacts. Their value lies in their usage by a community.

dneto, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Just got back from some business travel in Europe. Nice to see USB-C charge ports showing up in hotel rooms and airport seating.

dneto, 29 days ago to random

Jet lag and food poisoning will flatten you.
Fortunately I have a 284h podcast queue.

Currently listening to episode 4 of the 99% Invisible series on The Power Broker.

https://pca.st/episode/1b7e9505-ca7b-43fd-9627-c3f018e83991

dneto, 9 hours ago to random

Inclusive language tips:
Instead of "Hey guys", say "Hey folks" or "Folks".
Instead of "manpower" say "staff".

Concision, precision, and inclusion.

#dei

gfxstrand, 13 days ago to random

This week's project: Reworking NVK cbuf support. We've had a lot of issues with too much internal stalling and I think a lot of them come down to the fact that we're re-binding cbufs every draw call.

My plan for root constants, is to do inline updates with the LOAD_CONSTANT_BUFFER command. I don't know how much of a difference there is but I strongly suspect this pipelines much better.

For bound cbufs, I'm planning to just make our dirty tracking way more competent.

We'll see how it goes!

dneto, 5 days ago to random

University of Toronto students are protesting the situation in Gaza and demanding financial divestment in Israel and cutting ties with universities in Israel.
The University is willing to give in on the first, not the second, and has given 24hrs to accept the terms and vacate the premises.

This reminds me of the fight against South African apartheid. Students led a 6 year campaign ending in full divestment, including a 3hr occupation of the president's office
https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/university-toronto-students-win-divestment-apartheid-south-africa-1984-1990

gfxstrand, 1 month ago to random

If your implementation of fp64 add changes based on whether or not there's a depth buffer, something has gone horribly wrong.

(This is a subtoot about the OpenGL CTS.)

TomF, 2 months ago to random

Reading Biden's transcript I can see myself very easily. I constantly misremember what year something happened in my life, or how long I was at a job. I mean, I have a terrible memory in general, but I can be spectacularly wrong about what year something happened.

I know this isn't "average", but it is "normal", i.e. well within the bell curve of humanity. And you know how to solve the problem? You write stuff down. It's not exactly a debilitating weakness. You just write stuff down.

dneto, 2 months ago to random

Holy cow.

Back in the 80s I bought an album of instrumental music: the Wyndham Hill Sampler album for 1988. (That was a thing record companies did, to generate interest for music that would otherwise not get attention, definitely no mainstream airplay.)
The album had some great stuff on it, and I've missed it.
I could never find it on streaming services...until today. Yowza this brings back memories.
"Climbing into geometry" (!) for example.

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7CECD5718BD137B2&si=M_a9vDB_igateOhn

julienbarnoin, 1 month ago to programming

I've been working a lot with #glsl for a while now, writing complex code. Overall, I feel like the single improvement that would make the most difference for the language would be support for pass-by-reference instead of copy in/copy out syntax, as suggested here https://github.com/KhronosGroup/GLSL/issues/84

This would make it possible to do a lot of things that are either not possible or ridiculously inefficient to compile, including object oriented programming.

#programming #gamedev