• Why can't the pre-compiled ones be distributed? (Score:2)

  by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) writes:

  Yes I guess that is a stupidly simplistic question. On steam even in Linux I have had that 'vulkan shaders' background thread running seemingly for tens of minutes any time a driver or game is updated - that's just stupid.
  • Re: Why can't the pre-compiled ones be distributed (Score:2)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) writes:

    My limited understanding is that the compiled shader is specific to the card and driver. So there are probably a lot of combinations.
    • Re: Why can't the pre-compiled ones be distributed (Score:2)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 ) writes: on Thursday April 02, 2026 @01:30PM (#66074228) Homepage

      Yes, this. There are many *many* combinations. Distributed compilation and a remotely hosted shader cache would cost a lot of money to host. I don't think it's the technical considerations that are as preventative as simply the cost of hosting the service.

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      • Re: (Score:2)

        by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) writes:

        Microsoft announced Advanced Shader Delivery which does that, delivering precompiled shaders or partial ones when not possible to enumerate all combination. They did it for the rog ally(obviously easier for a fixed hardware) and now plan to extend it to pc. https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]
        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 ) writes:

          Oh, that's pretty neat. Microsoft is definitely the right level to address this at - they already have permission to enumerate the HW, own the hardware and software infra to tackle this, enjoy economy of scale other players are not privvy too, and can deliver a solution in a vendor agnostic way. Thanks for the heads up. It's the right thing to happen.
      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) writes:

        Yes, this. There are many *many* combinations. Distributed compilation and a remotely hosted shader cache would cost a lot of money to host. I don't think it's the technical considerations that are as preventative as simply the cost of hosting the service.

        What is the power consumption for doing this tens of millions of times, and how does the greenhouse gas emissions from that compare with the power consumption of running the servers? It seems like there are a lot of hidden costs in the current approach.
        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SirSlud ( 67381 ) writes:

          Of course there are. Tragedy of the commons. My point is that no single entity is likely to absorb the costs unless they're already enjoying economy of scale advantages and there are business experience/optic benefits to doing so. The poster above you pointed out that Microsoft seems to be addressing this, which makes a lot more sense to me than doing it at the 3d HW vendor level.

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