[gameprogrammer] Re: What do the new processors mean for game programming?
- From: Chris Schnurr <Chris.Schnurr@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 13:46:17 +0000
Spoke too soon Bob..
http://www.scee.presscentre.com/content/detail.asp?releaseID=3D3692&newsarea=
ID=3D2
(Although I am sure you are right on multi-threading optimisations)
"
Among the highlights of Cell released today:
=95 Cell is a breakthrough architectural design -- featuring eight=20
synergistic processors and top clock speeds of greater than 4 GHz (as=20
measured during initial hardware testing)
=95 Cell is a multicore chip capable of massive floating point processing
=95 Cell is OS neutral and supports multiple operating systems=
simultaneously
"
C
At 21:46 01/03/2005, you wrote:
>Processor used to get about 50% faster every year, for the last 4 or 5
>years they have only been getting about 20% faster/year and the rate at
>which they are getting faster is slowing down. If the rate had stayed
>the same we would be buying 10GHz processors right now. Instead, you
>can't even get a 4GHz processor. OTOH, the number of transistors you can
>fit on a chip just keeps doubling every couple of years...
>
>The result is that all the newest processors are 64 bit machines with
>either hyperthreading, multiple cores, or both. That means that for the
>foreseeable future if you want you code to run faster it has make use of
>multiple threads.
>
>It seems to me that most programming languages currently in use have
>little to no built in support for multithreaded programming. Java is the
>only one I can think of. Are you folks thinking about how to make use of
>multiple processors in your games? What approaches are you using? What
>libraries? Are any libraries really designed to help?
>
>It just seems to me that this is a big change and that it isn't being
>discussed anywhere. I have this horrible feeling that a lot of people
>are going to buy brand new hyperthreading multicore motherboards and
>then wonder why their favorite game doesn't run any faster than it used
>to.
>
>In fact, it is so completely ignored that I find many people with HT
>Pentium 4s have hyperthreading turned off.
>
> Bob Pendleton
>
>
>
>
>---------------------
>To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html
---------------------
To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html
Other related posts:
