Photon Onboarding

First Workday Agenda: 

1. Team Meeting (get Slack, Confluence, etc.)

2. One to two hour conversation about motivation for Photon and its architecture with Pablo

3. Set up Tooling + Vulkan Install ~ 30 min

4. Start working through Ray Tracing in One Weekend with Pablo

5. By end of day: 

   1. Either you know everything: C++, Vulkan, GPU Architecture (extremely unlikely)

   2. Realize that this stuff is hard ==> Motivate you to spend 1 or 2 hours during the week learning the area they feel the weakest in.

6. Work on During the School Week: ~2 Hours (if you can manage)

   1. What is C/C++?

      1. C from a bottom up Computer Architecture / Memory focus: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXY5xcFHqg32r5MZ-HfpA2Tr8Ke2lDYwI (watch the first four videos. the first half of video #1 is logistics, so skip to the second half of video #1).

      2. Read Chapter 5 (the rest of the book is quite good)  

   2. Introduction to shaders: https://thebookofshaders.com/

      1. Chapter #1: “Getting started”

      2. Chapter #2: “Algorithmic drawing”

   3. Command Line Stuff: MIT The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

      1. Lecture #1: Course overview + the shell

      2. Lecture #2: Shell Tools and Scripting

   4. GPU Architecture:

      1. How do Graphics Cards Work? Exploring GPU Architecture (should understandable)

      2. Digital Design and Comp. Arch. - Lecture 20: GPU Architectures (you probably wont understand - but maybe try)

Additional Resources:

• Advanced Shader techniques and algorithms

  • https://mini.gmshaders.com/p/tutorial-overview

• How to think about data flow in c++

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX2nF1fW7kI

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBNpSqOOoRk

• the docs/ folder in the repo

  • https://github.com/lhr-solar/Photon/tree/main/docs

• if you are also interested in ‘machine learning’

  • https://jax-ml.github.io/scaling-book/gpus/

• great series on Vulkan

  • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmIqTlJ6KsE1Jx5HV4sd2jOe3V1KMHHgn

• just in case https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps