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Totally Unsustainable
Scripter
Join date: 19 Oct 2006
Posts: 14
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09-17-2007 00:13
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Lilith Tiger
Registered User
Join date: 27 Nov 2005
Posts: 9
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09-17-2007 07:08
I wonder if Intel is considering a hardware physics accelerator? That would be very cool.
Of course, it would be even cooler if SL ever moved to a new version of Havok, ah well....
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Dzonatas Sol
Visual Learner
Join date: 16 Oct 2006
Posts: 507
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09-17-2007 07:51
They'll be going primarily after the multicore aspect. There is no need to build a physics chip except sometime in the future as an extra core unit on the multicore platform.
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Ralph Doctorow
Registered User
Join date: 16 Oct 2005
Posts: 560
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09-17-2007 08:35
From: Dzonatas Sol They'll be going primarily after the multicore aspect. There is no need to build a physics chip except sometime in the future as an extra core unit on the multicore platform. Is that true? Obviously multiple general CPU's are great for things like physics calcs, but I'd think that there'd be a significant performance advantage to a specialized processor to do physics as well, the requirements are pretty specialized. Havok is already working with ATI and maybe others to do physics processing on the video card and I could imagine Intel building a Havok specific chipset for video card companies. It seems to me to be more likely it would be in a separate card rather than on the multicore processor. It's my understanding that there actually are a significant number of PC's out there that for some reason aren't used mainly for gaming  |
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Dzonatas Sol
Visual Learner
Join date: 16 Oct 2006
Posts: 507
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09-17-2007 09:09
The bandwidth on the multicore die is extremely high (at least for modern comparison). To put such features on an extra board could defeat the purpose due to the external buss speed of the core.
Intel has shown plans (graphically) for server products of multicore design, which has an array of general cores and specific featured cores all in the same multicore unit. Might be able to find them in the slides on their website.
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Osgeld Barmy
Registered User
Join date: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 3,336
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09-17-2007 19:42
From: Dzonatas Sol They'll be going primarily after the multicore aspect. There is no need to build a physics chip except sometime in the future as an extra core unit on the multicore platform. this is probably true, they do this exact thing with their video chips and while yes the intel pentium X blah blah quad blah is nice its no geforce |
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Ralph Doctorow
Registered User
Join date: 16 Oct 2005
Posts: 560
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09-17-2007 20:27
In thinking about this some more, for MMOG's such as SL, if the physics isn't just about flashier visual effects, it really has to be on the servers I would think. A distributed physics calculation would be amazing to consider, but I'd think the network response and coordination would be a killer.
Given that, an accelerator would have to be something that would go into the server racks, and I doubt a separate card would. I'd think that to make this economically feasible, it would have to be available and effective for gamers as well.
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