The Slang project is seeking experienced GPU/graphics/AI compiler programmers who want to be part of the development of an ecosystem for AI-powered real-time graphics. My DMs are open.

New #NVIDIAResearch paper: SLANG.D: Fast, Modular and Differentiable Shader Programming: shows how a single language serves as a unified platform for real-time, inverse, and differentiable rendering. Collaboration with @MIT, @UCSanDiego, & @UW. 🧵 1/2 https://t.co/5DHzQldMMV

Bringing autodiff to shaders is a challenging task. It takes years of effort to design the language that integrates differentiation as a first-class citizen, allowing autodiff to work seamlessly with custom types, arbitrary control flow, generics and dynamic dispatch.

See our blog post here:

Slang is an open-source, cross-platform shading language that targets D3D, Vulkan, GLSL, CUDA and C++. Today, it is fully differentiable, which means you can autodiff your existing shader code!

It is traditional for programmers to measure our ages in hexadecimal. Today I became 2B, so it only seemed appropriate…

Be the cyberpunk dystopia you want to see in the world.

(1/5) Shading language and real-time rendering innovation are inextricably tied together. In this new talk, Slang researcher, Yong He, describes the details of new language features in Slang, and how they are used by real-time path tracing researchers. https://t.co/nYXYa3iSHu

We've been co-researching shading language and real-time rendering innovation for years. @TangentVector's recent talk describes the Slang journey from research to production.

Anybody who is excited about the possibilities of Slang can contact me by email/DM. Collaborators are welcome, and also we are hiring:

Folks who would like to learn more about the Slang shading language and our experiences deploying it at NVIDIA can check out the recording of my talk at the LLVM WiCT meetup:

(1/10) Slides + Recording of Petrik Clarberg’s GDC/GTC real-time path tracing research talk are now available online #GDC2022 #GTC22 https://t.co/CNAlWkIwlP

I can attest to the flip side being challenging. If you are sure that the “safe” choice is not the right one for your project, do not expect immediate buy-in and be prepared to do the hard work of explaining and justifying your choice.

It helps that both LLVM and clang are great technologies with strong communities. They are seldom an outright *bad* choice when they get used.

Making a “safe” technology choice can reduce perceived risk and help a project gain buy-in and momentum. That is not beneath consideration.

I see people debating use of clang/LLVM for GPU/graphics compilers again, but few recognizing the “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” factor.

Our real-time path tracers depend on many of Slang's advanced language features, and we co-design Slang language and renderers together. Come see @TangentVector talk about the journey of growing Slang from research to production.

The Women in Compilers and Tools Virtual Meetup will feature Theresa Foley with "Taking the Slang Shading Language From Research to Production". Join us this Thursday, 6pm PDT https://t.co/FKUh9cXBNb @TangentVector

Are there any (accessible) articles on how programming language design influences *what* gets built with them, particularly articles that contrast the needs of commerce vs. the needs of communities and the public commons?

Deeply frustrating knowing how often I’ve played Casandra in my career, warning people about bad ideas only to have them be implemented anyway, and then realizing that I don’t even get to feel any joy or vindication when people come around years later.