December 2013
Intermediate to advanced
116 pages
2h 15m
English
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Chapter 1. The Graphics Rendering Pipeline
If this is your first approach to shader technology, you should know a few things before we start writing GLSL code. The differences between the usual CPU architecture and a GPU are big enough to warrant mentioning them.
When you programmed applications in the past, you were aware of the underlying hardware: it has a CPU, an ALU, and memory (both volatile or for massive storage) and certain types of I/O devices (keyboard, screen, and so on). You also knew that your program would run sequentially, one instruction after another (unless you use multithreading, but that is not the point). When programming shaders, they will be running in an isolated unit called GPU, which has a very different architecture ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.