Top all-time · #6023
_pi_'s blog
Personal blog · blog.pimaker.atsystemsprogramming
_pi_'s blog is a personal blog at blog.pimaker.at about systems and programming. Since 2021, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its post on running Linux inside a pixel shader via a RISC-V emulator in VRChat. Commenters cite it as an example of unusual GPU and shader computing hacks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
PiMaker / _pi_ / Stefan's technology blog. Sometimes about Linux, VRChat or Shaders. Somtimes about all of the above.
Most-linked posts?
- Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2021-08-26
What Hacker News says?
Similar hacks: - ShaderToy + pseudoDoom: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lldGDr - Linux running in a pixel shader via a RISC-V emulator inside VRChat: https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “DOOM ported to run atop AMD ROCm + LLVM libc”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat as a story · 428 points
HN discussion> MIPSEL assembly as an IR http://nestedvm.ibex.org/ > NestedVM provides binary translation for Java Bytecode. This is done by having GCC compile to a MIPS binary which is then translated to a Java class file. Funny, it seems they are both from the same time period. ---- > Our first MIMD interpreter running on the MasPar MP1 [6] achieved approximately 1/4 the theoretical peak native distributed-memory SIMD speed whi…
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “MIMD Interpretation on a GPU [pdf]”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat as a story · 83 points
HN discussionSomeone did run Linux in a pixel shader on VRChat. https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “HVM updates: simplifications, finally runs on GPUs, 80x speedup on RTX 4090”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> I believe trying to run vector 2D graphics through the GPU rasterization pipeline doesn't quite work. I mean, it does work, it's just slower than using compute in most cases. I mean, people have emulated Linux in the GPU rasterization pipeline [1], so the raster pipeline is clearly Turing complete :) [1]: https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “Forma: An efficient vector-graphics renderer”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLinux running in a shader https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “Bytecode VMs in surprising places (2024)”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSorry but what I think you've done is just emulating a shell, not an actual Linux system. For that, you need to emulate some architecture that Linux supports, like x86/RISC-V/ARM. With that you should be able to boot a real Linux kernel. One guy even made a RISC-V emulator inside VRChat using a shader[1]. Doing it in JavaScript will probably be easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done that already. Un…
Comment linking /texts/rvc1/
on “Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly”Submitted Linux in a Pixel Shader – A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Linux in a Pixel Shader (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion