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I built a GPU back end for Emacs

en.andros.dev

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Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#51

Post by tom_ »

joshjob42 wrote: post #48
drob518 wrote: post #10

Well done. Here’s hoping that a hand-written GPU backend gets developed based on this wonderful proof of concept. There’s no reason to not take advantage of the state of the art hardware when it’s available. And screens are only moving toward 4k and higher (6k or 8k).

Or that GNU updates a policy that will very rapidly go from probably net silly/mildly contestedly useful to completely ridiculous in a year or two. Not allowing LLM code will be basically turning down the work of the worlds best programmers running at 50x speed in couple years, and will functionally doom any software project that enforces such a policy.

We shall see.

Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#52

Post by reinitctxoffset »

skydhash wrote: post #41
reinitctxoffset wrote: post #19

This is outstanding, if I have time I'll be switching over today. This is the kind of thing that could drive a truly free fork of emacs forward, it's enough better on realistic desktop displays to rally around and as the parent discovered "Free Software" at this point has very little to do with the freedom to do what I want on my computer in a low friction way: an ideological position on "GPUs" as a category is bizar…

> In the age of machine assist emacs could get a modern fast/cachable build, clean under all the sanitizers, io_uring on Linux, deterministic clang formatting, compat break with zero-use junk from the 80s, WASM compilation for polyglot extension (I like lisp but I understand why some people don't), modern networking, modern chrome, 100% vscode compatible LSP, modern theming that defaults to something that doesn't dri…

In fairness I only saw this like, an hour ago, so it'll probably be at least until after work before I start messing around with it.

Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#54

Post by reinitctxoffset »

tom_ wrote: post #47
reinitctxoffset wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW no one can tell anymore. Claude stopped doing all the LLM ticks like 6 months ago. There's a whole industry of people trying to detect LLM writing and they're getting stomped, this can be and is extremely well studied in the literature. The criticism is that you did something wildly ambitious and pulled it off. The blog is just well written.

People clearly can, though, because they did.

I'm inclined to believe the author, given that they were honest about the machine assist on the engineering? Why would they lie about the post and not the artifact?

More broadly, I'm just getting tired of the low effort snark on this. If someone is going to cite a passage, or examples of a theme, do some serious analysis by all means. I'm not trying to tone police high effort comments.

But this drive by "that's LLM output" thing is the new low effort "javascript is just as hard as c++" a.k.a "i don't know how to do that and i have no intention of learning and it feels bad so i'm going to lash out".

Make a case that something is deficient on its merits or don't, but baseless accusations of dishonesty are not a reasonable default. The parent here did real work that no one paid them to do, donated it to the community asking nothing in return, it's meticulous and high value, and they've already been run over by the FSF goons, you really want to pile on with no evidence?

Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#58

Post by ghosty141 »

andros wrote: post #12
ghosty141 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. I really dislike the somewhat corporate and characterless sounding tone of AI. I really liked the part where he tried to get it into upstream emacs, most of these type of projects never even get there. But yeah things like "bring honest numbers" sounds just weird.

Please, have some mercy, English is not my first language! Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind.

hey, honestly I personally wouldnt mind "unusual" english or some weird sentences. Obviously using AI to proofread and give suggestions is great use of it and I dont see a problem in that. Not a native speaker either so I can definitely relate :) I hope I didnt come off as too harsh, its just due to me seeing a lot of half-baked blog spam on r/emacs Ive gotten a bit sensitive when noticing AI writing.

Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#59

Post by wrs »

arikrahman wrote: post #27

Aside from the wonderful contribution to Emacs, I have the utmost respect for how straight-forward you were with the 100% LLM generated code. The enlightening conversation on GPU freedom that ensued was also informative.

This is a way of using LLMs that doesn’t seem appreciated enough: prototyping a refactor or other new approach to see how it goes. Even if you then rewrite it from scratch, it’s a big timesaver because you’re using the new knowledge to do the “right thing” and avoid backtracking.

Re: I built a GPU back end for Emacs

#60

Post by mickeyp »

jwr wrote: post #42

Emacs user for >32 years now. It's a pity this won't get merged. There is a big usability/accessibility factor to consider here: I really wish I could have something like the Ghostty cursor_blaze.glsl shader for highlighting where the cursor is when you switch windows/buffers/apps. Most people think GPU equals silly toys like video in a text window, but there is much more to it than that. [and yes, I know about beaco…

GPU speedups are welcome, but you don't need a shader and a gpu to insert a flashy effect.

Emacs has had this for decades: `pulse.el`. And building your own is very simple also.

You'll still need someone to write the glue code to trigger the pulse, but then a gpu patch on the backend wouldn't give you that either.

I'm sure someone on MELPA/Github has written code to do just this already.

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