Learning to write compute shaders can be really hard, especially if you’re coming from writing CPU code. In this article, I break down the concepts of parallel algorithms on the GPU using compute shaders in WebGPU. This is the mental model that I created to understand key concepts like workgroups, threads , dispatch and the general layout of the GPU architecture.
I’ve read a lot about this. Initially, at some point, nothing made sense to me anymore.
The way I managed to move forward was by literally writing crappy shaders myself until it finally clicked. As we all know, the best way to learn is to do it yourself and make a million mistakes along the way.
Very true! It’s all trial and error till it finally sticks, then you look back and begin to wonder, why it was so difficult in the first place. I wrote the article as an explainer. For me, being able to make a mental model of a problem in a “hypothetical environment” is a crucial step in problem solving.
I hope the article was helpful.
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