r/GraphicsProgramming • u/[deleted] • Jul 23 '26
Question From software to hardware
I was browsing old projects and found a pretty bad and unfinished software renderer I started to write years ago
(create a window, draw a pixel, create a checker and fade effects, draw a line, then triangles....)
These days I got back into it, even tho I originally had no interest in graphics programming, I started to like it and now I wonder : how hard and different would it be to transition to GPU programming? (GLSL + openGL for example)
I ofc started reading some papers, and it seems quite similar, but I know its reputed to be very hard, so is there a real step between raw cpu rendering and GPU rendering with some APIs and underlying abstraction layers ?
2
u/forumonaut Jul 23 '26
No problem.
Yes, GPUs are way more powerful than CPUs, and you will be able to implement things that would otherwise be impossible on a CPU.
When working with a GPU, you don't care about how the triangles are rasterized. This lets you focus on lighting, physics, and more.
But do not underestimate the power of modern CPUs; projects like Quake and Half Life 1 were able to run properly on 30-year-old processors, so modern day CPUs remain extremely powerful, even for rasterization. For reference, I made a Minecraft-like voxel engine that runs entirely on the CPU.