# From Splats to Silicon: Rethinking Computational Efficiency of 3DGS

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06157 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06157/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 74 of its 92 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 74)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [LightGaussian: Unbounded 3D Gaussian Compression with 15x Reduction and 200+ FPS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17245/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [Compressed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accelerated Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02436/) (2023)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [VastGaussian: Vast 3D Gaussians for Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17427/) (2024)
- [HAC: Hash-grid Assisted Context for 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14530/) (2024)
- [Taming 3DGS: High-Quality Radiance Fields with Limited Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15643/) (2024)
- [Multi-Scale 3D Gaussian Splatting for Anti-Aliased Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17089/) (2023)
- [Reducing the Memory Footprint of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17074/) (2024)
- [StopThePop: Sorted Gaussian Splatting for View-Consistent Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00525/) (2024)
- [PUP 3D-GS: Principled Uncertainty Pruning for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10219/) (2024)
- [Speedy-Splat: Fast 3D Gaussian Splatting with Sparse Pixels and Sparse Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00578/) (2024)
- [FlashGS: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting for Large-scale and High-resolution Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07967/) (2024)
- [How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13255/) (2024)
- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [HAC++: Towards 100X Compression of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12255/) (2025)
- [On Scaling Up 3D Gaussian Splatting Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18533/) (2024)
- [Trimming the Fat: Efficient Compression of 3D Gaussian Splats through Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18214/) (2024)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12262/) (2024)
- [DISTWAR: Fast Differentiable Rendering on Raster-based Rendering Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05345/) (2023)
- [Efficient Perspective-Correct 3D Gaussian Splatting Using Hybrid Transparency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08129/) (2024)
- [ArticulatedGS: Self-supervised Digital Twin Modeling of Articulated Objects using 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08135/) (2025)
- [AdR-Gaussian: Accelerating Gaussian Splatting with Adaptive Radius](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.08669/) (2024)
- [Sort-free Gaussian Splatting via Weighted Sum Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18931/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) represents scenes with explicit primitives and supports real-time novel-view synthesis, yet its system efficiency varies substantially across scenes, viewpoints, rendering paths, and platform constraints. Existing studies pursue efficiency through representation and algorithm design, GPU runtime optimization, and architectural support, but their reported gains correspond to different points along the rendering and update paths. Connecting these indicators to end-to-end system benefit requires tracing how each optimization changes Gaussian selection, screen-space work, data movement, and stage or frame time. We therefore use a workload-centric framework to connect representation and algorithm research, GPU runtimes, and hardware architectures and to identify recurring workload patterns. We complement literature analysis with reproduced measurements and controlled GPU profiling of selected implementations, relating workload counts to stage time and memory traffic. Together, these comparisons show that system gains depend on workload reductions reaching downstream execution, granularity matching each stage, and the cost of data transfers, synchronization, and cached results, gradients, and optimizer data. Building on these findings, we discuss more consistent evaluation under rendering-quality constraints and identify key directions for future system design.