Multicore - as it relates to gaming

[Malladine]

Interesting article on our very own anandtech which I thought deserved a topic here in the software forum

"You can expect games to take advantage of multi-core pretty thoroughly in late 2006 as games and engines also targeting next-generation consoles start making their way onto the PC.

Writing multithreaded software is very hard; it's about as unnatural to support multithreading in C++ as it was to write object-oriented software in assembly language. The whole industry is starting to do it now, but it's pretty clear that a new programming model is needed if we're going to scale to ever more parallel architectures. I have been doing a lot of R&D along these lines, but it's going slowly."

 

[eklass]

at the very least, i'd like the ability to launch a game on a seperate processor/core so that it doesn't compete with the OS for cycles. that was i don't need to shut down apache, mysql, etc before playing a game

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: eklass
at the very least, i'd like the ability to launch a game on a seperate processor/core so that it doesn't compete with the OS for cycles. that was i don't need to shut down apache, mysql, etc before playing a game

those apps will still take RAM though

 

[Wicked2010]

Originally posted by: eklass
at the very least, i'd like the ability to launch a game on a seperate processor/core so that it doesn't compete with the OS for cycles. that was i don't need to shut down apache, mysql, etc before playing a game

This makes no sense.

Just because you have 2 CPUs doesn't mean the game will run smooth. You'll have apache and your database all competing for I/O. Not a good thing.

You'd have to shut er down to play any game that involves 3D.

 

[eklass]

Originally posted by: Malladine

Originally posted by: eklass
at the very least, i'd like the ability to launch a game on a seperate processor/core so that it doesn't compete with the OS for cycles. that was i don't need to shut down apache, mysql, etc before playing a game

those apps will still take RAM though

i'm well aware of that

of course my gig of ram typically is suffice. if not, i've got another slot open

Originally posted by: Wicked2010

Originally posted by: eklass
at the very least, i'd like the ability to launch a game on a seperate processor/core so that it doesn't compete with the OS for cycles. that was i don't need to shut down apache, mysql, etc before playing a game

This makes no sense.

Just because you have 2 CPUs doesn't mean the game will run smooth. You'll have apache and your database all competing for I/O. Not a good thing.

You'd have to shut er down to play any game that involves 3D.

i didn't say that it would run smooth. again, i understand they all share certain inputs (such as cpu, ram, bus, etc). my comment was strictly speaking about cpu cycles

 

[imported_obsidian]

Multithreading isn't just a simple programming feature. Multithreading bugs are some of the hardest to reproduce and fix. Combine this with games being one of the most complex types of software out there and it will definentely be quite some time before games can realize the full potential of dual cores.

 

[Wicked2010]

Originally posted by: eklass

i didn't say that it would run smooth. again, i understand they all share certain inputs (such as cpu, ram, bus, etc). my comment was strictly speaking about cpu cycles

But that isn't good for anything... so it's completely worthless.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: obsidian
Multithreading isn't just a simple programming feature. Multithreading bugs are some of the hardest to reproduce and fix. Combine this with games being one of the most complex types of software out there and it will definentely be quite some time before games can realize the full potential of dual cores.

still interesting to theorize. I just hope that ILP can improve as well so the whole cost isnt on the devs (as the article discusses). If it doesn't or another solution isn't found, such as a new programming language built to incorporate multithread programming, i cannot at all see games which utilize multiply threads remaining under $50.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: obsidian
Multithreading isn't just a simple programming feature. Multithreading bugs are some of the hardest to reproduce and fix. Combine this with games being one of the most complex types of software out there and it will definentely be quite some time before games can realize the full potential of dual cores.

Absolutely true. However, I think that once multi-cored processors become more economically viable (perhaps by the late 2006 mentioned?), the scalability of threading is worth it.

 

[PingSpike]

Considering the amount of bugs the average software title exhibits on current single processor platforms, I'm not so sure how excited I am about this upcoming trend.