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Hardware for NextGen Software

Hardware for NextGen Software

2004-08-30 - By Roman Ormandy

Back

Reply: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I noticed that a lot of you guys are buying new hardware or consider
upgrading your current system. As you know we are working hard on next major
TS upgrade and while I am unable to comment on that just yet I decided to
share here my opinions on suggestion for hardware upgrades. These are my
personal opinions and in no way constitute any product announcements from
Caligari.

With that out of the way let me say upfront that one way not to go is to
buy 64 bit CPU's and expect large performance increases for 3D authoring.
While AMD CPU's are nice and while Intel spent billions of dollars on 64 bit
CPU technology the results are already in: Intel is on the losing side and
it is not AMD who may reap the benefits.

The winner is multi-core parallel processors. That may seem like a distant
future, but you already may be using them without even knowing it. When
NVIDIA started to call their 3D accelerators "GPU's" (Graphics Processing
Unit) it sounded just like another marketing gimmick. But today these GPU's,
running DX9 and Shader3.0 are starting to take on more and more 3D computing
tasks, shading pixels, calculating geometry, collisions, physics and more.
If you look at NVIDIA 8600 or ATI X800 architectures you see that they both
have 16 pixel shader processors with full floating point precision and 6
vertex shader processors for geometry which are even more powerfull.

That is 22 processors in each GPU. Now Intel may tell you that these are not
truly general purpose (and they are not) and you should just wait till next
generation applications will be developed to take advantage of their 64 bit
instruction set. Well, I am one of those software developers and I am
telling you not to hold your breath expecting some vast performance
increases from your friendly 3D authoring app on 64 bit CPU's. In fact
Microsoft, who knows a lot about 3D is not waiting for Intel either as they
banished Intel CPU from XBox2 in favor of unnamed IBM CPU.

Why did they do it? The answer to that question is Sony multi-core Cell CPU
(not a GPU) which not only will be the beating heart of PS3 but also of many
other Sony electronics product, just like PS2 chips are now part of flat
screen Wega TV's. How many 32 bit CPU cores will Cell have is anyone guess
but judging from Ken Kutaragi's past performance and present bold statements
it will be a lot, perhaps 64. Sun already announced that next year they will
ship workstations with 64 core Niagara CPU's. Reacting to those
developments, Intel killed their nextgen single CPU Tejas in favor of
dual-core CPU to be shipped in 2005 but it may be too little and too late
for them.

Now back to Microsoft. DX10+ developers at Microsoft started to exchange
"meaningful" looks when I asked them about OS support for those NVIDIA and
ATI GPU's. This year at Siggraph, Microsoft presented no less than 12
research papers, many of them presenting algorithms running on GPU instead
of CPU, including fluid dynamics paper. Let us also not forget that the
entire Longhorn desktop UI will run on top of DX10. Finally, if you have
$3,000 you can buy a complete photo-realistic renderer from NVIDIA called
Gelato, which is taking advantage of GPU power.

Intel does have still one dark horse in the race which might have Trojan
powers and reverse the odds back in favor of CPU's. It is called PCI
Express. PCIe in fact is not a bus at all and has nothing to do with PCI;
it is a point-to-point internet in a box architecture completely scalable
(unlike a bus) and very suitable for parallel CPU's. This will become
clearer next year when second generation PCI Express systems called AS
(Advanced Switching) will reach the market. AS adds a complete switching
fabric connecting any kind of computing elements and could give 3D Authoring
aps parallel, Sony Cell like hardware environment (unless Intel will make it
impossible to use non-Intel CPU's).

Let me conclude by making practical purchasing suggestions. My advice is, no
matter how low your budget is get a DX9 card today. They are already below
$100, if you can live with a smaller amount of VRAM. Next, save you money
for a PCI Express PC which will give DX9 GPU a very nice performance boost
(of course DX9 card must have PCIe connector). Finally, if you plan 1-2
years ahead, with arrival of PCI Express AS systems you may get a true PC
based parallel workstation. Chances are on those kinds of PC's next
generation of trueSpace will run rather nicely:)

Roman Ormandy

Caligari

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<DIV>
I noticed that a lot of you guys are buying new hardware or consider
upgrading your current system. As you know we are working hard on next major TS
upgrade and while I am unable to comment on that just yet I decided to share
here my opinions on suggestion for hardware upgrades. These are my personal
opinions and in no way constitute any product announcements from
Caligari.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p>
With that out of the way let me say upfront that one way  not to go is to buy 64 bit CPU's and
expect large performance increases for 3D authoring. While AMD CPU's are nice
and while Intel spent billions of dollars on 64 bit CPU technology the results
are already in: Intel is on the losing side and it is not AMD who may reap the
benefits. 
<o:p> </o:p>
The winner is multi-core parallel processors. That may seem like a
distant future, but you already may be using them without even knowing it. When
NVIDIA started to call their 3D accelerators "GPU's" (Graphics Processing Unit)
it sounded just like another marketing gimmick. But today these GPU's, running
DX9 and Shader3.0 are starting to take on more and more 3D computing tasks,
shading pixels, calculating geometry, collisions, physics and more. If you look
at NVIDIA 8600 or ATI X800 architectures you see that they both have 16 pixel
shader processors with full floating point precision and 6 vertex shader
processors  for geometry which are
even more powerfull. 
<o:p> </o:p>
That is 22 processors in each GPU. Now Intel may tell you that these are
not truly general purpose (and they are not) and you should just wait till next
generation applications will be developed to take advantage of their 64 bit
instruction set. Well, I am one of those software developers and I am telling
you not to hold your breath expecting some vast performance increases from your
friendly 3D authoring app on 64 bit CPU's. In fact Microsoft, who knows a lot
about 3D is not waiting for Intel either as they banished Intel CPU from XBox2
in favor of unnamed IBM CPU.
<o:p> </o:p>
Why did they do it? The answer to that question is Sony multi-core Cell
CPU (not a GPU) which not only will be the beating heart of PS3 but also of many
other Sony electronics product, just like PS2 chips are now part of flat screen
Wega TV's. How many 32 bit CPU cores 
will Cell have is anyone guess but judging from Ken Kutaragi's past
performance and present bold statements it will be a lot, perhaps 64. Sun
already announced that next year they will ship workstations with 64 core
Niagara CPU's. Reacting to those developments, Intel killed their nextgen single
CPU Tejas in favor of dual-core CPU to be shipped in 2005 but it may be too
little and too late for them.
<o:p> </o:p>
Now back to Microsoft. DX10+ developers at Microsoft started to exchange
"meaningful" looks when I asked them about OS support for those NVIDIA and ATI
GPU's. This year at Siggraph, Microsoft presented no less than 12 research
papers, many of them presenting algorithms running on GPU instead of CPU,
including fluid dynamics paper. Let us also not forget that the entire Longhorn
desktop UI will run on top of DX10. 
Finally, if you have $3,000 you can buy a complete photo-realistic
renderer from NVIDIA called Gelato, which is taking advantage of GPU power.

<o:p> </o:p>
Intel does have still one dark horse in the race which might have Trojan
powers and reverse the odds back in favor of CPU's. It is called PCI Express.
PCIe in fact is not a bus at all and has nothing to do with PCI;  it is a point-to-point internet in a box
architecture completely scalable (unlike a bus) and very suitable for parallel
CPU's.  This will become clearer
next year when second generation PCI Express systems called AS (Advanced
Switching) will reach the market. AS adds a complete switching fabric connecting
any kind of computing elements and could give 3D Authoring aps parallel, Sony
Cell like hardware environment (unless Intel will make it impossible to use
non-Intel CPU's).
<o:p> </o:p>
Let me conclude by making practical purchasing suggestions. My advice is,
no matter how low your budget is get a DX9 card today. They are already below
$100, if you can live with a smaller amount of  VRAM. Next, save you money for a PCI
Express PC which will give DX9 GPU a very nice performance boost (of course DX9
card must have PCIe connector). Finally, if you plan 1-2 years ahead, with
arrival of PCI Express AS systems you may get a true PC based parallel
workstation. Chances are on those kinds of PC's next generation of trueSpace
will run rather nicely:)
 
Roman
Ormandy
Caligari</DIV></BODY></HTML>