Recent Posts

1

3D-Tech News Around The Web / NVIDIA Announces CUDA-X HPC

« Last post by JeGX on June 17, 2019, 07:53:15 PM »

From fluid dynamics and weather simulation, to computational chemistry and bioinformatics, HPC applications span across many domains. Developing these applications requires a robust programming environment with highly optimized domain specific libraries.

Announced today, CUDA-X HPC is a collection of libraries, tools, compilers and APIs that helps developers solve the world’s most challenging problems. Similar to CUDA-X AI announced at GTC Silicon Valley 2019, CUDA-X HPC is built on top of CUDA, NVIDIA’s parallel computing platform and programming model. CUDA-X HPC includes highly tuned kernels essential for high-performance computing (HPC). GPU-accelerated libraries for linear algebra, parallel algorithms, signal and image processing lay the foundation for compute-intensive applications in areas such as computational physics, chemistry, molecular dynamics, and seismic exploration.

Link: https://news.developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-announces-cuda-x-hpc/

2

3D-Tech News Around The Web / Light Tracer: Experimental GPU Ray Tracer for Web

« Last post by JeGX on June 17, 2019, 07:41:36 PM »

Light Tracer is an experimental engine for GPU accelerated, photorealistic client-side rendering inside a Web browser.

Client-side Web renderer

Light Tracer is the world's first solution for GPU accelerated, photorealistic client-side rendering inside a Web browser. At the moment, only Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are supported.


Physically-correct engine

It is based on a physically-correct unbiased ray tracing engine working on any graphics card – both discrete GPUs like NVIDIA/AMD and integrated GPUs like Intel (with a lower performance, of course).


Fast and efficient

Highly optimized GPU path tracing engine allows for instant feedback in the viewport while navigating 3D scenes. Interactive modifications made possible by partial acceleration structure rebuilds.

Links:
- http://lighttracer.org
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkGqisJw3Vc

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3D-Tech News Around The Web / The Tech Behind Successful Indie Games

« Last post by JeGX on June 17, 2019, 07:34:35 PM »

Some interesting stats about the technology used (what kind of game engine) to create some successful or very popular indie games:

https://medium.com/@jeremie.stamand/the-tech-behind-successful-indie-games-b3f87b1b4d6

4

General Discussion / Re: stars shader

« Last post by OliverS on June 16, 2019, 06:25:46 PM »

Hello there.

Can you guys give me a direction where to get assistance about making a specific shader?

I want to make a starry night sky from 2 separate textures: 1 for the sky background + 1 for the stars. The stars texture is 90% empty, as in RGBA(0, 0, 0, 0) and only have scattered white points or little blobs as stars.
I need an idea about how to make a shader for the stars texture to draw a cross for each star (horizontal/vertical spikes). The idea here is whenever camera is rotated the crosses stay unrotated.
One alternate way is to just have a pre-crossed star texture and draw it multiple times at different locations over the already rotated background. But with 1000 stars I'm afraid it's not going to be very economical. And I want to take advantage of the shader parallelism.

The shader would probably be something like the simple blur shader. I'm saying this because I guess it should "smudge" the points (original stars) upwards, downwards, left and right.

But I have no clue as to where to begin. Seeing those amazing Geeks3D shaders I thought what I want is doable relatively simply.

I also need help with this. Help is higly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Regards,
Oliver

5

3D-Tech News Around The Web / Vulkan API specifications 1.1.111 released

« Last post by Stefan on June 16, 2019, 05:30:23 AM »

Change log for June 10, 2019 Vulkan 1.1.111 spec update:

  * Update release number to 111.

Github Issues:

  * Clean up flink:vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceFormatsKHR and
    flink:vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceFormats2KHR to drop the
    ename:VK_FORMAT_UNDEFINED case, require callers pass a supported
    surface, and rearrange some validation-related language (public issue
    207).
  * Allow dynamic and nonuniform indexing of acceleration structures in the
    <<interfaces-resources-descset, Descriptor Set Interface>> section
    (public KhronosGroup/glslang issue 1766).

Internal Issues:

  * Clarify when images require the use of YCbCr samplers for
    slink:VkWriteDescriptorSet and slink:VkImageViewCreateInfo (internal
    issue 1639).
  * Remove the "`block`" language around <<features-robustBufferAccess,
    vectorizing and robust buffer access>> (internal issue 1642).
  * Allow code:OpTypeImageFormat == code:Unknown for input attachments in
    the <<interfaces-resources-descset, Descriptor Set Interface>> section
    (internal issue 1645).
  * Fix asciidoctor conditionals around
    ename:VK_ERROR_FULL_SCREEN_EXCLUSIVE_MODE_LOST_EXT in the
    <<fundamentals-errorcodes>> section (internal issue 1679).
  * Remove error codes from `vk.xml` for
    flink:vkUninitializePerformanceApiINTEL, which has a `void` return type
    (internal issue 1704).
  * Various subgroup-related fixes in the <<spirvenv-capabilities,
    Capabilities>>, <<shaders-subgroup-arithmetic, Arithmetic Subgroup
    Operations>>, <<shaders-subgroup-clustered, Clustered Subgroup
    Operations>>, and <<shaders-subgroup-partitioned, Partitioned Subgroup
    Operations>> sections (internal merge request 3164).
  * Fix asciidoctor markup affecting math rendering in the <<Precision of
    core SPIR-V Instructions>> table (internal merge request 3166).
  * Fix incorrect reference to flink:vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures2KHR in the
    description of slink:VkPhysicalDeviceASTCDecodeFeaturesEXT (internal
    merge request 3169).
  * Fix a non-sentence in the introduction to the <<textures, Image
    Operations Overview>> section (internal merge request 3184).
  * Minor markup, grammar, and typo fixes for the
    `<<NV_shader_sm_builtins>>` extension spec language (internal merge
    request 3189).
  * Clarify that 1D and 1D array format support is optional for cubic
    filters, immediately following the <<formats-mandatory-features-astc,
    Mandatory ASTC LDR format support>> table (internal merge request 3194).

source: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs/commit/ad46c7dc688fe973ac7299b651403be5f562db8e

6

3D-Tech News Around The Web / Vulkan SDK 1.1.108.0 released

« Last post by Stefan on June 16, 2019, 05:27:45 AM »

Released 6/14/2019
LunarG has released new Vulkan SDKs for Windows, Linux, and macOS based on the 1.1.108.0 header.
Overview of new additions to Vulkan SDK 1.1.108.0
 

• GPU-assisted validation code was updated to include validation for scenarios that arise when the VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing extension is enabled. Refer to this document to enable GPU assisted validation. For full details of GPU Assisted Validation refer to this white paper.
• The Linux "Tarball" SDK now provides one script that will clone and build repositories useful for Vulkan development. Pre-built binaries are still included in the Linux "Tarball" SDK but if there are any compatibility issues with the system, this new script can be used to clone and build them. See the Linux Getting Started guide for more information.
• Improved validation layer coverage and bug fixes

Since the release of SDK 1.1.106.0, the following extensions have been added to the Vulkan spec and may be supported by a Vulkan device. To query extensions available to a given physical device, call vkEnumerateDeviceExtensionProperties() or contact the hardware vendor.
 

• VK_KHR_uniform_buffer_standard_layout
• VK_NV_framebuffer_mixed_samples_coverage_reduction_mode
• VVK_EXT_headless_surface

For more information
Much of the documentation for this SDK is contained in the (Windows Getting Started Guide, Linux Getting Started Guide, macOS Getting Started Guide), found in the Documentation directory of the SDK and on this website. Please read the Release Notes for Linux, Release Notes for Windows, or Release Notes for macOS for additional information or go to the Vulkan SDK download site to download this new SDK.
LunarG’s software engineering experts create innovative products and services for open source and commercial customers using leading-edge 3D graphics and compute technologies, including Vulkan, SPIR-V, OpenXR, and OpenGL. We have strengths in performance analysis and tuning, runtime and tools development, shader optimizations, driver development, and porting engines and applications to Vulkan.
For more information about LunarG, please check out our website.
 

7

Geeks3D's GPU Tools / Re: OpenCL stress test? [Kombuster]

« Last post by impetus_maximus on June 14, 2019, 03:32:01 PM »

ah, ok. many thanks for the reply, and your work on Kombuster.

cheers
/max

8

Geeks3D's GPU Tools / Re: OpenCL stress test? [Kombuster]

« Last post by JeGX on June 14, 2019, 03:27:59 PM »

The OpenCL test has not been removed... it has not been added (yet).
Kombustor v4 is new (even if it's a one-year old product) and I didn't have the time to put all tests of Kombustor v3 in the v4. The Plasma test (particles) is planned in a future update and I will do my best to add the OpenCL test too.

9

Geeks3D's GPU Tools / OpenCL stress test? [Kombuster]

« Last post by impetus_maximus on June 14, 2019, 02:33:49 PM »

howdy

looking at this article http://www.geeks3d.com/20140917/msi-kombustor-3-5-0-gpu-burn-in-stress-test-opengl-opencl-benchmark/
there is an OpenCL stress test. installing the latest version (Kombustor IV 0.8.0.0 64-bit) i'm not seeing any OpenCL tests.
tried older versions but still not there. Kombustor(v3) 3.5.2.1 64-bit wouldn't run on my system. (closes immediately) Win7 64bit, GT 730 (347.88)

was it removed?

thanks
/max

10

3D-Tech News Around The Web / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 SUPER Series

« Last post by JeGX on June 13, 2019, 03:11:11 PM »

NVIDIA plans to release shortly (July?) a new set of graphics cards, all more or less derived from the current RTX 20 series.

The following new graphics cards are planned:
- RTX 2080 Ti SUPER (based on a new GPU )
- RTX 2080 SUPER based on a TU104-450 with 3072 shader cores (+128 shader cores or one extra SM compared to current RTX 2080)
- RTX 2070 Ti SUPER (based on a new GPU )
- RTX 2070 SUPER based on a TU104-410 with 2560 shader cores (+256 shader cores or two extra SMs compared to current RTX 2070)
- RTX 2060 SUPER based on a TU106-410 with 2176 shader cores (+256 shader cores or two extra SMs compared to current RTX 2060)


Links:
- https://videocardz.com/81046/nvidia-geforce-rtx-20-super-series-to-launch-mid-july
- https://wccftech.com/exclusive-nvidias-super-gpus-unleashing-monsters/



- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPIqSVrxgo