Top all-time · #3991
Josh Barczak
Personal blog · joshbarczak.com/blogprogramminggames
Josh Barczak writes The Burning Basis Vector, a personal blog at joshbarczak.com about programming and games. Since 2014, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Why Geometry Shaders Are Slow (Unless You’re Intel)”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Josh Barczak's blog for GPU and graphics programming, especially his essay on premature optimization and his posts on SPMD programming on Intel GPUs. Most comments cite these posts as references rather than judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Geometry Shaders Are Slow (Unless You’re Intel)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-03-18
- Considering performance in the small is not “premature optimization”4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-01-02
- You Compiled This, Driver – Trust Me2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-23
- A Quick Study on Tokenizing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-27
- Let’s Close the Buffer Zoo2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-31
What Hacker News says?
They had limited uses and turned out to be incredibly hard to implement efficiently in hardware, so in practice it was nearly always faster to just keep using the proven techniques that GS was supposed to replace. http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=667
Comment linking /blog/?p=667
on “An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers”Submitted OpenGL Is Broken as a story · 156 points
HN discussionAny shader. You can render a single quad and calculate UV in the pixel shader. Geometrically, this is the most accurate method. You can do without any shaders, write a CPU code that builds a reasonably dense (about 8x8 pixels/triangle) static geosphere mesh with position and texcoord channels. You can also build a reasonably dense grid mesh occupying just the screen with just the positions in clip space, and calcula…
Comment linking /blog/?p=667
on “Behind the Tech with John Carmack: 5k Immersive Video”Submitted GPU Ray Tracing the Wrong Way as a story · 134 points
HN discussion"'Premature optimization is the root of all evil' is the root of evil" https://medium.com/@okaleniuk/premature-optimization-is-the-... http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1513451 http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=580 http://scottdorman.github.io/2009/08/28/premature-optimizati... It's basically an excuse to not think about the performance or implementation of your entire product until the end and then, when you…
Comment linking /blog/?p=580
on “Netflix: Removing client-side React.js improved performance by 50%”Submitted Stop Misquoting Donald Knuth as a story · 131 points
HN discussion"He didn't fully understand or appreciate the quote about premature optimization, so no one did." He ain't wrong though.... most people definitely don't get the jive for sure. Knuth was talking about a massively different kind of optimisation than what we do today yet people keep continuing to parrot the 97% figure uncritically like as it was some gospel. [0] [0] http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=580
Comment linking /blog/?p=580
on “Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]”Submitted Considering performance in the small is not “premature optimization” as a story · 120 points
HN discussionI come across this one all the time, but it's usually in the form of "I know you're wrong, because person X made an argument that I don't understand, but this misunderstood summary of that argument says you're wrong". Happens all the time with the old Donald Knuth chestnut about "premature optimization". Half the time I hear it, it's from people who don't want to optimize at all. http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=5…
Comment linking /blog/?p=580
on “Logical fallacies in software engineering”Submitted You Compiled This, Driver – Trust Me as a story · 108 points
HN discussionAnother interesting reference from a few years ago: http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=1028 Also read the followups (1120 and 1197), as they go into considerably more detail about the SPMD programming model and some use cases. The author is now at Intel working on ray tracing.
Comment linking /blog/?p=1028
on “C-for-Metal: High Performance SIMD Programming on Intel GPUs”Submitted Why Geometry Shaders Are Slow (Unless You’re Intel) as a story · 99 points
HN discussionIt sounds like you've got something specific in mind when you say, "modeling". The term modeling is used in a lot of different situations to mean different things. For example, it could mean to make a 3d model in Blender, it could mean to pose for someone to paint you or to take a photo, with databases it's used to mean modeling the data, with statistics it's used to mean finding a way to simply represent and reason…
Comment linking /blog/?p=730
on “Ask HN: What to learn for math for modeling?”Submitted SPMD Is Not Intel’s Cup of Tea as a story · 89 points
HN discussion> We dispatch instanced draw calls where each instance corresponds to a segment’s quad. The vertex shader finds all of the information it needs from the primitive offset and segment id of the quad it is working on. Hm, any reason you're using instanced quads? From my understanding of how GPUs work, instancing only has big gains when you have a lot of vertex data in the draw call [0]. Instead of the instanced quads,…
Comment linking /blog/?p=667
on “WebRender newsletter”Submitted Fine, I’ll Go Build My Own Disassembler, with BlackJack as a story · 89 points
HN discussionSubmitted Let’s Close the Buffer Zoo as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Quick Study on Tokenizing as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Quick Study on Tokenizing as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bits and Kibbles as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Let’s Close the [DirectX 12] Buffer Zoo as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Geometry Shaders Are Slow (Unless You’re Intel) (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
