half datatype?

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2012-11-20 01:45, Manu wrote:
> On 19 November 2012 22:28, Rob T <rob at ucora.com <mailto:rob at ucora.com>>
> wrote:
>
>     On Monday, 19 November 2012 at 19:14:43 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>
>         I'd never even _heard_ of half types before this discussion came
>         up. But then
>         again, the same goes for SIMD. And IIRC, there was some sort of
>         function
>         attribute relating to pointers and registers that you or some
>         other gaming
>         person was insisting on a while back, and I'd never heard of it
>         existing in
>         C++ either (as an extension or otherwise). You clearly program
>         in a very
>         different world than I do. I care about high performance in what
>         I do but
>         nothing on _that_ level. I suspect that this is another one of
>         those things
>         that certain folks would really like to have, and most of the
>         rest of us don't
>         have any real interest in and often know nothing about in the
>         first place. I
>         don't know that I really care whether it's added to the language
>         though. I'll
>         leave that sort of decision up to Walter.
>
>         If anything, I just find it interesting how many low level
>         things folks like
>         you keep coming up with as must-haves or very strong wants that
>         I've never
>         even heard of and will almost certainly never care about aside
>         perhaps from
>         how having them in D might help D catch on.
>
>         - Jonathan M Davis
>
>
>     Anyone interested in the low precision float types, and what they
>     are good for, can start here
>     http://www.opengl.org/wiki/__Small_Float_Formats
>     <http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Small_Float_Formats>
>
>     I did not read through all of this thread, but my guess is that the
>     people making the request for half float are mostly into game
>     development and image processing.
>
>     When I first started investigating D as a potential C++ replacement,
>     I noted that a lot of the "visible" development (what I could see
>     being publicized) was game development, so it seemed that for some
>     reason a lot of the D users were also game developers, so there's
>     perhaps something about D that they find attractive.
>
>
> I've said it before, but I think D has MASSIVE potential in gaming. We
> are an industry crying our for salvation from C++, but there's no
> possibility to compromise on the level of access it provides us to the
> hardware we work with.
> D is the only language I know of that seriously threatens to offer
> modern programming constructs, while still providing a syntax and
> compiler technology that I can easily understand in terms of code
> generation and can hit the metal when I need to.
>
> Additionally, most games programmers have very long-term relationships
> with C++ almost exclusively, so despite hating it, moving to something
> utterly different like rust or whatever cool thing comes along will just
> never fly. You'll never convince a team of 10-30 programmers to agree on
> such a change all at once, and re-training staff in something so foreign
> would never be economical.
> D is again particularly interesting here because it's enough like C++
> and C# that programmers feel immediately comfortable and somewhat
> liberated, but not threatened. Also, in a lot of cases, the changes to D
> are relatively intuitive. The things you expect should work, often just
> do... but there are still lots of rough edges too.
>
> Gaming is a very demanding and progressive field of software, but also
> very backwards at the same time. It's a sort of unity between many
> disciplines, and it all comes together under a performance critical and
> usually embedded umbrella, in a highly competitive and fickle industry.
> You can't tell the customer to upgrade their hardware when it needs to
> run on a console with an ~8 year lifecycle. As a (tech/engine)
> programmer, if you don't scrutinise the code generation, calling
> conventions, memory access patterns, data layout and sizes, the
> competition will, and their product will appear superior. Towards the
> end of that 8 year cycle, programmers are REALLY squeezing these
> machines. If the language doesn't support that, then you can't compete
> anymore, hence we remain stuck on C++ (and there are many instances
> where the industry is reverting to C because C++ is a bloaty pig).
>
>     Why game devs are interested so much in D is interesting considering
>     the GC is noted to be a problem for game devs. The work of H. S.
>     Teoh comes to mind with his work on a game engine, that pushed the
>     limits of the GC and std lib.
>
>
> I'll admit this is my biggest fear hands down!
> That said, D is the only GC based language I know if where the GC is
> relatively optional. This allows us to hedge our bets, and ease in to it
> slowly as we gain confidence and understanding of how it behaves.
> I don't yet have much confidence in the GC, and generally avoid using
> it. I only use it for short term allocations, or non-critical-loop work
> which often only survive for the scope of the function.

Someone has created GC free versions of Phobos and druntime:

http://3d.benjamin-thaut.de/?p=20#more-20

Was posted here:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/k27bh7$t7f$1@digitalmars.com

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg