[gameprogrammer] Re: What do the new processors mean for game programming?
- From: Robert Chafer <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 22:46:58 +0000
Very interesting question, and not only for games programming. Not
only is thread programming poorly understood (generally) and ...
difficult. Also, the multi-core technologies will allow threading
models that are really completely different to current ones. The close
coupling of the cores will mean very (very) fast signalling and
sharing of information.
On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 15:46:03 -0600, 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
>
>
>
>
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--
Rob Chafer
Silverfrost
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