Slashdot Mirror


Add Another Core for Faster Graphics

Dzonatas writes "Need a reason for extra cores inside your box? How about faster graphics. Unlike traditional faster GPUs, raytraced graphics scale with extra cores. Brett Thomas writes in his article Parallel Worlds on Bit-Tech, 'But rather than working on that advancement, most of the commercial graphics industry has been intent on pushing raster-based graphics as far as they could go. Research has been slow in raytracing, whereas raster graphic research has continued to be milked for every approximate drop it closely resembles being worth. Of course, it is to be expected that current technology be pushed, and it was a bit of a pipe dream to think that the whole industry should redesign itself over raytracing.' A report by Intel about Ray Tracing shows that a single P4 3.2Ghz is capable of 100 million raysegs, which gives a comfortable 30fps. Intel further states 450 million raysegs is when it gets 'interesting.' Also, quad cores are dated to be available around the turn of the year. Would octacores bring us dual screen or separate right/left real-time raytraced 3D?"

17 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. need a reason by b1ufox · · Score: 5, Funny

    Need a reason for extra cores inside your box? No :)

    --
    -- "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - TAE --
  2. Need a reason for extra cores inside your box? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Who needs extra cores when you've got free hardcore?

  3. How many do I need by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lemme see, at this rate I'll need: 9 cores for the raytracer, 7 cores for the physics simulation, 5 for the AI, 3 for the OS, and of course

    One core to rule them all
    One core to find them
    One core to bring them all
    And in the darkness bind them ;)

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:How many do I need by Freaky+Spook · · Score: 5, Funny

      One core to rule them all

      One core to find them

      One core to bring them all

      And in the darkness bind them

      You just installed Vista onto that rig didn't you

      *Ducks*

    2. Re:How many do I need by legoburner · · Score: 4, Funny
      Lemme see, at this rate I'll need: 9 cores for the raytracer, 7 cores for the physics simulation, 5 for the AI, 3 for the OS

      Yeah, but asteroids will look AMAZING!
    3. Re:How many do I need by Frightening · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, and you'll need a team of dedicated hobbits to buy all that shit and put it together.

      Also, you'll probably need a Kandalf case to put it all in.

    4. Re:How many do I need by TheOrquithVagrant · · Score: 2, Funny

      > And in the darkness bind them

      I see you're sensibly predicting the first game to use this rendering technology will be "Doom 4",
      which still won't provide ducttape for the flashlight.

    5. Re:How many do I need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      It doesn't meet the minimum system requirements for Vista

  4. Why on the CPU? by onion2k · · Score: 1, Funny

    Wouldn't it be possible to write a raytracer that used the GPU core(s) instead of the CPU? Raytracing is pretty much entirely vectors isn't it? That's what GPUs do best.

    NB: The only raytracer I've ever written was in PHP and it managed about 0.01 frames per second with very basic geometry and no textures, so I'm probably very, very wrong.

  5. Re:It's been done... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Oh? I released my real-time raytraced intro in 1996. It did 10fps on my lowly 66MHz 486. Uphill. Both ways. With 96 kilobytes of data. And snow.

  6. Re:Won't happen soon. by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 2, Funny

    "going after a fly with a bazooka" + raytracing in the same game? Hell, I'D BUY IT!!! :)

  7. Re:I need more cores... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I offer a web service whereby you can offload your system idle process to my servers for a small fee. The servers are specially optimized for the system idle process and it only takes 1-2% of the CPU so I can run 50-100 system idle processes per box. It's quite revolutionary actually. Should save you a bunch on extra cores to run this process in the future. It's not well known but generally the OS has a system idle process on every core so that's 4x the savings if you have a quad-core box.

    Our SLA even specifies how infrequently the idle process is run - we can do it as idle as you like, for more money.

  8. Re:"entirely vectors" by pimpimpim · · Score: 3, Funny
    No, ray tracing is all about searching databases for ray-object intersections.

    So the choice for php+sql might not be such a bad idea after all ;)

    --
    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
  9. Re:I need more cores... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You've been flogging this service on /. for long enough, no? It's a waste of money.

    You can eliminate the Idle Process just by downloading one of the "idle process crackers". It's a small piece of OSS code which kills the Idle Process or limits the amount of time it can use. It's installed by default with Seti@Home and Folding@Home clients (since they need all the horsepower they can get!)

  10. Re:Use a moment method with physical optics by EmagGeek · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nah this was a long time ago. It may have been "cutting edge" research then, but nowadays the average 3rd grade advanced calculus student could figure it out in their head. All you have to do is take an arbitrary object in 3-space, chop the volume up into little 3D blocks that can be represented by known equations, test the incident field in those little blocks by integrating the interaction of the incident field with the material and shape of the block, and calculate the far-field by performing a fourier transform on the resulting solution matrix. Piece of cake, as long as you don't forget that the incident field at a given block is the sum of the incident plane wave and the scattered nearfields from the other blocks in the mesh :)

  11. Re:Put it on the GPU by JohnPM · · Score: 3, Funny

    The problem with raytracing researchers is that they are incredibly myopic.
    Yes but myopia would seem to be one of those problems that ray tracing would be much better at solving since it can handle refraction directly.

    --
    Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
  12. Re:That should read 450 million raysegs by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's nothing. As long as you're running an Intel chip with a class-G phase varying containment field you should be able to reverse the polarity of the fluxing core to match that of the capaciting core, and then temporally render twice that much. That's assuming that you have a 1.21 Jiggawatt PS (I would personally recommend the 1.8 Jiggawatt unit from PC Power & Cooling just to some breathing room).

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain