Skip to content
HomeVideosBooksBlogs
AllTop postsTopics
Podcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K
    A

    Adam Sawicki

    asawicki.info · Personal blog · on HN since 2013

    Adam Sawicki is a graphics programmer who writes on GPUs, DirectX 12, floating-point numbers and game physics.

    Visit blogRSSHN submissions
    Systems & PerformanceGames
    What HN says

    HN links his floating-point myths post when discussing numeric differences across GPUs and CPUs, and his data-oriented design links for game development.

    Stats for nerds
    15HN people shared it
    43linked in comments
    438story points
    Oct 2023last shared
    2014people per year2023

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      Hello World Under the Microscope
      2 people · 95 points · first shared 2022 · 14 comments on HN
    2. 2
      Car Physics for Games (2003)
      4 people · 94 points · first shared 2013 · 13 comments on HN
    3. 3
      Myths About Floating-Point Numbers (2021)
      3 people · 67 points · first shared 2021 · 91 comments on HN
    4. 4
      Bezier Curve as Easing Function in C++
      1 person · 58 points · first shared 2025 · 6 comments on HN
    5. 5
      All Sources of DirectX 12 Documentation
      1 person · 34 points · first shared 2025 · 18 comments on HN
    6. 6
      Calculating the Bounding Rectangle of a Circular Sector
      1 person · 30 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
    7. 7
      The roots of software development in the textile industry (2024)
      2 people · 7 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
    8. 8
      State of GPU Hardware (End of Year 2025)
      2 people · 6 points · first shared 2025 · Discussion on HN
    9. 9
      FP8 data type – all values in a table
      2 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · Discussion on HN
    10. 10
      How Do Graphics Cards Execute Vector Instructions?
      1 person · 4 points · first shared 2020 · Discussion on HN

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • raphlinusFeb 2022

      Lots of problems with this (https://xkcd.com/386/).

      "All shader languages are very similar to C". Even counting only mainstream shader languages, MSL is explicitly based on C++ and not C. There is a big difference. The non-mainstream shader languages will also be increasingly important, because who wants to be restricted to C dialects?

      "and have all the usual features associated with C save for pointers." MSL has strong built-in support for pointers. In addition, the future of Vulkan is increasingly pointer-friendly.

      HLSL compilation. This oversimplifies the story a bit. DXC only produces DXIL which is D3D12+ (and SPIR-V, so it can be used on Vulkan with little hassle). Older dialects (shader model 5) work on D3D11 as well, and can also be compiled offline, but that requires FXC [1] (FXC output, DXBC, can be used in D3D12, you just don't get as much access to newer features).

      "Some languages however encourage you not to compile shaders to an IR such as GLSL with OpenGL". This is no longer true as of OpenGL 4.6, which can use SPIR-V. On the other hand, it's probably best to think of OpenGL as a nearly obsolete API, only useful for compatibility.

      "The metallib compiler is available in the command line in any recent MacOS installation." It might also be worth pointing out that it is also now available on Windows. Thus, on a single Windows box it is possible to go from your source language to all major shader IL's.

      "GLSLang even supports compiling HLSL to SPIR-V, though…

    • ImpossibleDec 2014

      Game developers have been big on data oriented design (http://www.asawicki.info/news_1422_data-oriented_design_-_links_and_thoughts.html) in recent years. It's funny, because data-oriented design examples tend to look like the original ("bad"?) array of values example in the blog post. Most of articles on DOD focus on performance, which seems of least concern to most software engineers,
      but I think it helps with understanding how your data is transformed and results in easier to understand code.

      I don't see how OOP is any more applicable to games than it is to other software. In a typical business or social CRUD app you can represent things in the same way you could in an OOP game. "Hero" becomes "User", "Monster" becomes "Friend", "Inventory" becomes "Account", etc.

      Otherwise I strongly agree with you. I think all software should be written in a more functional or data-oriented style. The biggest reason I'd write OOP code now is that many game designers and programmers, and most popular game engines and frameworks, prefer OOP.

    • yencabulatorOct 2023

      That's probably more about GPUs cheating to be faster[1]. https://asawicki.info/news_1741_myths_about_floating-point_numbers

      [1]: Back in the day, CPU results could also vary based on path of execution; see tweet in article.

    Related

    Josh Barczakjoshbarczak.com18 people

    OpenGL Is Broken

    Josh Barczak
    Personal · last shared 2025
    Random ASCIIrandomascii.wordpress.com274 people

    There are only four billion floats, so test them all (2014)

    Random ASCII
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Erik Rigtorprigtorp.se21 people

    Low latency tuning guide

    Erik Rigtorp
    Personal · last shared 2026
    NVIDIA Developer Newsnews.developer.nvidia.com75 people

    PhysX SDK 4.0, an Open-Source Physics Engine

    NVIDIA Developer News
    Company · last shared 2020
    Interplay of Lightinterplayoflight.wordpress.com17 people

    How Unreal Renders a Frame

    Interplay of Light
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Fabien Sanglardfabiensanglard.net525 people

    The Polygons of Another World

    Fabien Sanglard
    Personal · last shared 2026
    NVIDIA Technical Blogdevblogs.nvidia.com177 people

    Volta: Advanced Data Center GPU

    NVIDIA Technical Blog
    Company · last shared 2025
    NVIDIA Blogblogs.nvidia.com436 people

    Nvidia Unveils GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs

    NVIDIA Blog
    Company · last shared 2026