GDC 2016: "Taming the Jaguar: x86 Optimization at Insomniac Games" by Andreas Fredriksson (@deplinenoise) of Insomniac Games https://gdcvault.com/play/1023340/Taming-the-Jaguar-x86-Optimization

I thought this was really good, because it discussed CPU microarchitecture in an understandable way.

The first section was about the frontend of the chip, which is the part that fetches instructions. The Jaguar can fetch 2 instructions per cycle, which can actually be a bottleneck if you're doing a bunch of quick math on registers.

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🆕 blog! “I'm OK being left behind, thanks!”

Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to use, and utterly reliable.

"You don't want to get left behind, do you?" They countered.

That struck me as a bizarre sentiment.…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/im-ok-being-left-behind-thanks/
⸻
#AI #crypto #future #technology

Great news today for GPU-accelerated text rendering:

"""
I was granted a patent for the Slug algorithm in 2019, and I legally have exclusive rights to it until the year 2038. But I think that’s too long. The patent has already served its purpose well, and I believe that holding on to it any longer benefits nobody. Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain. ...

To aid in implementations of the Slug algorithm, reference vertex and pixel shaders based on the actual code used in the Slug Library have been posted in a new GitHub repository and made available under the MIT license. ...
"""

Thank you, @EricLengyel!

https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html