Multicore vs. PPU

[the Chase]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
I am not sure what would be the best idea between having a second chip on the video card (which people already do for SLI on a card solutions), or if you could add some additional hardware on the front end to allow the GPUs pipielines to do the calculations. So, look at ATIs next generation cards with 48 or so unified shader pipelines, and maybe in addition to doind vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders, they can also do physics calculations. Sure you are gonna need a bigger die, and more memmory for everything to work smoothly, but its gotta be cheaper and more efficient than a 2 card solution. In a room with little physics you will have your physics card sitting idle, but if its a combined solution this jsut means that you have more RAM and ALU bandwidth open to the visual calculations. On the flip side, when a big explosion or something happens you can borrow some bandwidth for awhile. If you look at the tech demos they show tons of explosion all at the same time.

Also, since you already have the geometry information being worked on in the GPUs memmory the CPU never even has to get involved.

I just read an article that had some of this very concept in it http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0NSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== Pretty good article IMHO. They say the same about the GPU doing phyx calculations. But in your example, the explosion, right when you need the most phyx processing to program the randomness and real particle effects of the explosion, is also the same time that you need a huge amount of rendering power to render the scene and get it to your monitor. This would be the case for a lot of happenings in games. Our video cards now can barely render the grass areas in Oblivion, how are they going to do both? Unless the unified arch. cards are twice as powerful and efficient as the current ones I think the phyx end of it would be pretty limited for a long time.

 

[tvdang7]

just purchased a dual core cpu. since thee PPU has come out.....im guessing all that hype about games using the second core wont happen anymore? for instance. i like ghost recon AW and that supports the PPU but i want it to use my secodn core instead of the PPU. not going to happen huh? : (

 

[Markbnj]

No I don't think so at all. Physics is only one possible CPU-intensive task in a game, and you will continue to see games increasingly developed to break these tasks into multiple threads.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
bah, you never said anything about wanting a 128bit bus. but anyways, I can jsut say that would could put it all on one die, deffinitely all in one MCM that you stick into an HT connected socket on a board. But my point was not to argue the validity of putting a chip on a motherboard becasue that is an idiotic idea, my point was to say that this is something that belongs on a graphics card, and not on its own card.

It needs a 128 bus to function. Much like a 64 bit video card, it would suck ass with only 64 bits of bandwidth

 

[BrownTown]

I dunno, is it me, or is it just the lost in translation effect heere?, why is everyone today arguing with me about stuff i agree with them on?

Yes, you are right, you need more bandwidth, yes it would take too much room on the motherboard, and yes its a dumb idea to put it on the motherboard we agrees on all points here, further discussion on this point is worthless. If you post another comment about this it will force me to write a 500 word essay/rant of a post, so just don't even go there.

 

[seanp789]

I think the PPU will see its true potential when both hardware and software can support fully destructible environments. There is no doubt the PPU has potential but i think this first generation PPU will be a bit of a disappointment to many.

Also, multicore cpus are not in the majority of systems...yet. It seems to be taking programmers some time to adjust to its potential. Anyone thats played GRAW or oblivion seen 100% cpu useage yet? Didn't think so.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: the Chase
And use one of those cores to render graphics too! I'm tired of buying new graphics cards every year. And use one to do the sound processing. Crap, this may save me a lot of cash!

actually i think that would cost you more to obtain that CPU :X

 

[DancingWind]

PPU SWEET!!!!
Personally I think it's a very great idea (if it wiil be well implemented)
SLI??? Crosfire??? people ... don't you have where to spend youre money? what about electricity bills? 300-500$ for a 0-50% percent increace?
but a PPU now thats a great idea.
The thing that modern games lack is A) Physics B) AI
sure both of them improved a lot but cpui just can't keepup with our wishes
so if physics part can me mooved to a specialized module i say go for it!!! no more SLI or Crossfire if you whant a game that 'Feels' better get a PPU

And about the AI card ... I think thats also a good idea .. I mean a REAL Artificial Intelligence (like a neuron network tank or smth) if that would be possible ... (DancingWind goes to it's fantazy world)