half datatype?

Tue Nov 20 01:10:55 PST 2012

On 20 November 2012 09:41, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

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

Nice case study! Thanks!
Looks like a cool little game too :P

> Was posted here:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/**k27bh7$t7f$1@digitalmars.com<http://forum.dlang.org/thread/k27bh7$t7f$1@digitalmars.com>
>
> --
> /Jacob Carlborg
>
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