Explain To Me The Benefits of SM 3.0 For Nvidia

[Reverend]

Basic idea: use branching to combine many shaders into one. An uber shader can save performance by reducing state changes, depending upon a number of other factors.

Er... what's an "uber shader" supposed to be?

 

[DemoCoder]

Didn't he just explain it? Nalu's skin shader is an example of one.

 

[KimB]

From here:

Yes, this is a state change (and shader recompile in pixel shader). Uber shaders can be used to avoid state changes, but uber shaders use extremely coherent dynamic branching (branch condition supplied as a vertex attribute), rather than static branching.

Edit:
And yes, that too, DemoCoder.

 

[Reverend]

Sorry... first I heard of this, er, term.

I have my own workarounds to avoid state changes (even pre-SM3).... I suppose my work should be easier. Who should I contact for this?

edit : Note that I don't have a SM3.0 card.