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Valve's New Direction On Multicore Processors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-not-to-enjoy-this dept.

illeism writes "Ars Technica has a good piece on Valve's about face on multithread and multicore application in programming. From the article: '...we were treated to an unveiling of the company's new programming strategy, which has been completely realigned around supporting multiple CPU cores. Valve is planning on more than just supporting them. It wants to make the absolute maximum use of the extra power to deliver more than just extra frames per second, but also a more immersive gaming experience.'"

4 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. So have the Win multicore bugs been worked out? by kalirion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember reading of all kinds of bugs in games running on dual-core processors in Windows. Something to do with the OS providing different amount of power to the two cores. Has that been sorted out, or will Valve be compensating in the game engine code?

    1. Re:So have the Win multicore bugs been worked out? by oggiejnr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A lot of problems can be caused by the lack of a coherent timing signal across even logical, let alone physical, processors. This is the main reason behind cut of lines, out of sync video etc bugs which affects a lot of older games designed to only one processor.

    2. Re:So have the Win multicore bugs been worked out? by ThosLives · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've never considered an OS as a 'driver' for a processor; I've always looked at a processor as a fixed-ability piece of hardware, and for good reason: reliability. The more knobs you have on something, the more likely it is to be broken.

      --
      "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
  2. Re:Debugging multithreaded code by I+Like+Pudding · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't forget about software transactional memory. Haskell already has it, and I'm sure there are more implementations to come (Perl 6, for instance).