CPUFreak91 Member Posts: 2337 From: Registered: 02-01-2005 |
quote: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/105147911/article.pl I guess Moore's law isn't such an issue any more. When you hit the limit... add another core ------------------ "Oh, bother," said the Borg. "We've assimilated Pooh." "Socialism works great... if there are no people involved." -- Pastor David Ginter, Union Church of Guatemala. |
bennythebear Member Posts: 1225 From: kentucky,usa Registered: 12-13-2003 |
wow...i'm still wishing i had a dual core cpu to use...whenever i they have 32 core cpu i might have a quad core.  ------------------ proverbs 25:7 www.gfa.org - Gospel for Asia www.persecution.com - Voice of the Martyrs |
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Matt Langley Member Posts: 247 From: Eugene, OR, USA Registered: 08-31-2006 |
The other day we just had an Intel Threading bootcamp here at GG in which Buzzmonkey and Pipeworks (two other local game dev companies) attended as well. The Intel guys talked heavily about how games and game engines can take advantage and utilize multiple core processors while also displaying the very real and very large challenges the game development industry has in doing so. Multiple core processors will effect games quite a bit, though I wouldn't hold your breath before they dramatically effect gaming on a general scale. Unfortunately the nature of games makes it more difficult to take advantage of multiple cores (though don't take this in meaning they won't effect gaming, just not as much as other uses of a computer). ------------------ |
HanClinto Administrator Posts: 1828 From: Indiana Registered: 10-11-2004 |
quote: Wow! Matt, that sounds incredibly interesting. I'm really impressed that Intel took time to do that -- I assume that this was an event that Intel sponsored, in order to try and get more game developers on board with multicore development? I think it's seriously cool that they gave you guys a class on that stuff. From your second paragraph, it sounds like you don't anticipate Torque making full use multi-core processors any time soon -- even just thinking about it myself, I'm not sure what could be utilized with dual core in Torque. I guess Torque already has a nice division created between client and server, perhaps that would be a good line to split Torque into running on two cores (so splitting on an organizational line, rather than on a functional line, such as networking/graphics). I really don't know though. |
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Matt Langley Member Posts: 247 From: Eugene, OR, USA Registered: 08-31-2006 |
quote: Yeah, Intel is very proactive about getting game developers and game engine developers to utilizing multicore processors. Which makes sense, so they have added value to their current and upcoming products. They brought in two quad-core machines for the demonstrations.
quote: You hit the nail right on the head. We definitely are interested in ways to take advantage of multi-threading (and multi-core support, which goes hand in hand). Though one of the main points of the presentation was that a good, multi-threaded solution for game technology that is scalable and efficient is very very hard. Though what we also learned is there are some easy methods to take advantage of it in minor ways. These ways won't scale when quad core becomes popular (or any n core value), though it does add advantage to the current dual core setups that are becoming more prevalent. Unfortunately us being in the engine dev market it makes finding a good solution tricky. Especially since the test cases they showed us (some major games and game tech) they customized it to take advantage of the individual games needs. Since we sell an engine that we semi-market as a general use engine it makes it hard to get one implementation that works for everything. Also, as you brought up, our engines being very networking centric makes this even trickier. Since the biggest issue with multi-threading is synchronization. Some things you just can't realistically split up and send off to be done 'sometime'... which makes it tricky with Torque since certain aspects need to be done in a certain order for the networking. Of course rendering is the big block that no one has effectively multi-threaded and the impression we got was it probably will not be, then again you never know. In any case it was very educational and interesting. If we go for an approach we will definitely be better off now. Intel is also very proactive about giving assistance to games and game engines that utilize this tech. ------------------ |
jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
On the subject of multi-processing, does anyone have any experience with OpenMP? (Open Multi-Processing) ------------------ |