SDK 10.0 and Shader Library
NVIDIA's SDK is where you'll find it's collection of code samples, effects, techniques, libraries and documentation for programming its GPUs. The latest public version contains support for some GeForce 8-class development practices, and some of the SDK code samples can be found implemented almost verbatim in many games, however updates are somewhat infrequent.
With the 10.0 SDK hitting the internet in term of content delivery, as we talked about with FX Composer 2's pull of shaders and techniques via RSS, the main update frequency becomes more tolerable. That's not to say that NVIDIA have taken the release of 10.0 as an excuse to leave all updates to a web delivery format. Lots of DX10 only content will make its way into SDK 10.0, befitting the name and making sure that come the promised update to ShaderPerf and the release of PerfHUD 5.0, developers using NVIDIA hardware have a complete set of Shader Model 4.0 development, documentation/sample and profiling tools.
NVIDIA will also announce at GDC 2007 that they'll be accepting user submissions into their Shader Library, which ships as part of the main SDK. Accepted submissions will be pushed out first via RSS into FX Composer before being bundled into the next official download.
We'd have liked to have seen an update to the browser to include regex searching into code samples for function use-case discovery, but you can't get everything at once. Support for COLLADA FX and CgFX shaders is coming in the Shader Library and the initial release will include an improved set of over 100 shaders, NVIDIA working to clean the cruft out of the old collection before updating it with a bunch of new, up-to-date and well documented shader examples for developers to learn from.
