As of July 2023, this mod is obsolete. Sodium has implemented a uniform cache into their own codebase, making the existence of this mod pointless.
Seaborgium is a free and open source optimization mod for Minecraft. It improves the rendering performance of the game by implementing optimizations that are overlooked by other mods.
In order to install Seaborgium, it is preferred you download the mod from our Modrinth page.
Then, you just need to place the appropriate version into your mods folder. Seaborgium provides a unified jar, which means it contains both the Fabric and Forge versions of the mod.
You do not need to download a loader specific version.
TODO: Write custom builds section, discussing how to compile mod.
Seaborgium implements a simple cache that stores the locations of uniform variables for each shader program.
When GLStateManager invokes glGetUniformLocation for the first time, Seaborgium checks if it has a cached location for the requested uniform.
If it does, it returns the cached location without invoking glGetUniformLocation.
If it does not, it invokes glGetUniformLocation and stores the result in the cache for future use.
This optimization reduces the number of OpenGL calls and avoids unnecessary overhead.
Invoking glGetUniformLocation is known to be quite slow, and it is not uncommon for drivers to consume noticeable CPU time to process this function.
By caching the result of this function, Seaborgium is able to avoid wasting CPU cycles waiting for a function to return data we should already have on hand.
Seaborgium has no reported incompatibilities with other mods as of now. It targets a niche function that is not modified by other mods. However, any mod that changes the rendering API from OpenGL to another one such as Vulkan will likely cause issues with Seaborgium. Such mods are not recommended.
Also, any mod that dynamically recompiles shaders and changes the uniform locations will invalidate Seaborgium’s cache. This is a rare scenario, but it could happen. Seaborgium does not currently have a way to handle such a scenario.