Multi-core processors may replace physics cards--
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Multi-core processors may replace physics cards--
Interesting, of course what if you actually do something with those cores besides physics and graphics? I thought 5 years ago that physics was going to be the next big thing ... and to a degree it has become something big.
However, I don't think that they have the same effect as graphics hence the fact that physics accelerators will probably not become the industry that graphics cards have become ... not unless more than a few games come out that are physics card only.
People will pay extra money for a graphics card which increases the quality of a whole game (i.e. 60 FPS all the time at high res in 32 bit color and all the shader effects) however people aren't likely to pay for something which is used just to add a few cool side effects. Let's face it, unless someone makes a game which is like Half-Life 2 on crack where everything is completely physically modeled physics cards aren't going to take off. A few crummy effects aren't worth it so in the end they can be handled by a CPU with extra cores instead of something completely dedicated to physics.
It'll be interesting to see how the physics card developers fire back.
Sure, physics is "the next big thing" -- but it's true, a processor built for physics calculations is like shooting yourself in the foot, awaiting multicore processors is where the money is at. What they really need to do is get away from x86, but that's another issue. ;)
unless someone makes a game which is life Half-Life 2 on crack where everything is completely physically modeled physics cards aren't going to take off.
Couldn't it be the other way around? Bring out physics cards to allow us to do that sort of game? Game companies want to make games more realistic and having everything interactive would do that.
Of course they're going to tout their own products as being better than the competition.
I don't care if it's driven by a physics card, a insane 3xSLI solution or a quad core cpu. I prefer an easy API where i can say what i want and don't have to care what's going on under the hood...
Shouldn't DirectX10 or 10.1 do this to a certain degree?
Beside of this it would be nice to have a new 3d physics based concept which simplifies the usage of it. Till now you're going parallel and the usage feels very different to me. Steering by transforms and physics just isn't the same until you make your own workarounds for it.
When 8 or 16 core processors are the norm, co-processors will be redundant and no longer needed (unless the datapath to those co-processors is that much larger than a single core's datapath... but that's another story entirely).
A specialized multicore physics chip would still outperform a normal multicore cpu...
Not sure I quite agree Kanati, since graphics processings are highly parallelized and many times more efficient at processing graphics than any generic cpu. That would almost be like saying let's replace a fast gpu with 8 cpu's to get the same performance. Specialized hardware will always be more efficient at doing what it does than generic, and it will only be a matter of laziness that determines that people go for lots of cpu horsepower - to make up for its loss of speed in generalizing.
Im with Angel, when you are going to put 8 core processors in a system, it will almost certainly be better to make the "Dedicated" rather than Generic. That is one of these 8 core would be Grtaphics, one would be FPU, one ..... etc
I disagree but i don't know what to argue more to this as it's pretty obvious in my opinion and history shows that it always went like this...
I disagree but i don't know what to argue more to this as it's pretty obvious in my opinion and history shows that it always went like this...
Why have you posted this when both the posts since yours have agreed with you?
That would almost be like saying let's replace a fast gpu with 8 cpu's to get the same performance.
That's how I felt, more-so considering you can pretty much double-up on GFX cards thanks to SLi, so the card is in a sense "multi-core" as well.
DX10 is supposed to come with some kind of physics API that can make use of your GPU or multicore processors. I expect all that will happen down the road is that video cards may come bundled with PPU's onboard.
modern games have barely touched on physics really. Once the tech and API's have matured into mainstream I think we will see what games with proper physics are really capable of.
Why would a GPU need a PPU?
Ever realized that a X1800 is that fast that any CPU or PPU is a weak joke compared to in on FPU performance? ^^
But one thing that might happen is "gamer graphic card" which means high end GPU for graphics and an additional lower end for physics (throug havoc fx or the like), similar to what ATI expected for high end gamers :) (2 ATI highend crossfire for graphic and a lowend ati for physics)
You might recall how some of the early graphics cards were extraordinarily slow and not very capable compared to today. So most likely this first generation of hardware physics units isn't going to be the ultimate cream of the crop. Give it another 5 years maybe and then you'll have much better performance.
@H&K
Sorry, i've misunderstood what you've written...was done in a hurry before turning off...
BTW, you can now watch the "Ice Storm Fighters" [Intel multi-core demo] demo we did here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om6rdOvEK9ISound and video is bit crappy, but it's better than nothing :)
Oh and a Alan Wake link too...
By the way is this Finnglish the guy is talking? :O)