Subject: New newsletter (tS7) 2005-05-16 - By hans_k
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DAVID STUBBS <hawksridge@(protected)> skrev den Mon, 16 May 2005 11:58:07
-0400:
> Would that mean the yes is applied to these following questions. How
> about multitasking with other applications while T.S.7 is running.
> Please excuse my limited understanding of this issue.
It is about multi kernel processors. Also known as cell processors.
Below are some citations from tsml post from Roman:
- Hans
"I am not excited by 64 bit CPU's, either from Intel or from AMD. Next
generation trueSpace will run far better on a whole bunch of 32 bit cores
compared to a single 64 bit gigantium CPU. In my opinion 64 bit 6GHz CPU is
a dinosaur, soon to be eclipsed by swarms of nimble massively parallel 32
bit mammals."
"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:)"
"IBM announced plans to put Cell in desktop workstations on multiple OS's.
We
are following that closely, if that happens, many aspects on next version
trueSpace would be accelerated, not just rendering."
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