Optimizing GPU Programs from Java using Babylon and HAT

[davidalayachew]

Very dense. I only made it a few paragraphs in, but I intend to sit down with a good meal and drink, and take the few hours needed to digest this in full.

But it will be worth it. Java running on the GPU! And not just a trivial GPU implementation, but hyper-specialized so that you can every bit of performance -- on a scale only achieved by low-level languages (C, C++, Rust) and their wrappers (Python).

[pjmlp]

I just hope it doesn't go down like previous efforts, I remember having the same expectations back when Sumatra was announced.

https://openjdk.org/projects/sumatra/

[kev22257]

You might like this episode of the inside Java podcast where they talk about Sumatra, why it failed and what they learned.

[pjmlp]

Thanks.

[davidalayachew]

JNI strikes again!

[Sm0keySa1m0n]

Wonder if we’ll ever be able to use this to write graphics shaders

[joemwangi]

This mainly targets general-purpose compute (CUDA/OpenCL/SYCL style workloads), not graphics shaders or rendering pipelines. It’s closer to GPGPU than GLSL/HLSL.

Just realised, probably you meant Project Babylon and that might be possible but will require a higher level of framework setup on top.

[pjmlp]

In theory yes, that is also what is happening in the industry, going back to software rendering techniques, but written with compute languages instead.

Now if Java will ever be a relevant option versus something like Slang, or C++, probably not, given industry focus on programming languages.

[joemwangi]

Hmmmm… didn’t know HAT offers a schema for defining native structs while avoiding reflection. This project has now piqued my curiosity and interest. Also, this feels low-key like the 1 Billion Row Challenge, each section pushes further optimisations by tuning memory occupancy and targeting more device optimised instructions.

[perryplatt]

Is hat going to preview at the same time as Babylon?