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AMD Plans 1,000-GPU Supercomputer For Games, Cloud
arcticstoat writes "AMD is planning to use over 1,000 Radeon HD 4870 GPUs to create a supercomputer capable of processing one petaflop, which the company says will make 'cloud' computing a reality. When it's built later this year, the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse for a variety of people, from gamers to 3D animators. The company claims that it could 'deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser.' The idea is that the Fusion Render Cloud will do all the hard work, so all you need is a machine capable of playing back the results, saving battery life and the need for ever greater processing power. AMD also says that the supercomputer will 'enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.' Meanwhile, game developers would be able to use the supercomputer to quickly develop games, and also 'serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail.' The supercomputer will be powered by OTOY software, which allows you to render 3D visuals in your browser via streaming, compressed online data."
Intel Plans 2,000-GPU Supercomputer For Games, Lightning
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Even if the "work" is offloaded to the cloud won't you still need an assload of bandwidth on said devices in order to actually amount to anything? It's not like you're going to get pci-express bandwidth capabilities over dsl or cable internet connection.
"VNCing" games through the Internet and possibly a wireless network, and getting a decent enough latency and enough throughoutput to get a good image quality/FPS? Good luck with that, not saying it won't work, but if it does work satisfyingly and reliably it'll be an impressive feat.
Well I know StreamMyGame does it, but it's meant to be used locally, not over the internet + WiFi, right?
You just got troll'd!
Folding@home is at 1.007 PFLOPS of just ATI GPUs :)
(which is an entirely different sort of "computer", but still)
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Attention, AMD Marketroids: Please kill yourselves. Now. Do it now.
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I'm all for cloud gaming- it would be great to not have to upgrade my GPU all the time to play new games, however I wonder how this could be accomplished in a way where lag was so minimal as to not affect gameplay. It seems this would be especially hard if one were to play online games. Correct me if I'm wrong but it would seem one would need to add the lag from the client to the cloud AND the lag from the player to player (or server) in the multiplayer networking. That seems like a too much lag for most FPS's, which I'm assuming are one genre which would gain the most from such a supercomputer.
Try downloading a picture at your phone's native resolution (a screenshot of a 3d game taken on your phone would be ideal). It will take at least that long for a "game" to respond to your input on this system.
And I doubt that streaming a 3d rendering will really save much battery either considering all the network activity.
the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse
AMD also described NVIDIA's Quadroplex as more of an online My Little Pony.
They're going to have to write a driver that works before they get that to work.
The bandwidth is only a problem until we build bigger tubes. As much as we all like to bitch about internet here in the US, we're at least capable of increasing the bandwidth quite well. The real problem is dealing with the latency. With enough time and money we could easily push as much data as we could possibly want, but we can only push it so fast.
For some games it probably won't matter, but who'd want to use it for an FPS where regardless of how detailed your graphics are, even a tenth of a second lag is the difference between who lives and who dies? Until we can get around those limitations, I don't foresee the traditional setup changing much.
Playing Duke Nukem Forever @ 1900x1200 through the Fusion Render Cloud, occasionally reloading the latest results of the (fully operational)Super Hadron Collider on my Nintendo VR Goggles powered by a free energy device producing negative infinity carbon emissions.
I record my sleeptalking
Nvidia's GTX 295 was around 1.7 teraflops I believe, while the (similarly priced) 4870X2 is 2.4. The 'mere' 295 supposedly beats the 4870X2 by 15% average.
The difference is? Nvidia always has pretty good drivers. ATI struggles to allow games to take >50% advantage of even the lowly 3870 (as measured by the card's own performance counters)...let alone a 2.4 tflop card...let alone a massive array of 4870s.
Plus, wouldn't a 1000 GPU 4870 cloud...only allow some 1000 users some fractional percentage of one 4870 capped by latency and other overhead?
Or...are we talking about providing a larger number of mobile devices the equivalent capabilities and speed of 1999's Geforce 256?
Either way...I don't think it'll catch on, and will be a huge money sink for AMD when it needs to be fixing its processor and video card issues for the average, real consumers who are losing faith in AMD's ability to provide reasonable and usefully competitive products.
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Figures. See, most people thought that war had been won long ago. Perhaps it was, but now the Big Iron camp has a new ally: Big Software, who REALLY wants to do away with one-time licenses and purchases and substitute the far more lucrative "Web apps" and the subscription licensing and fees that paradigm will allow. They want to re-brand software as "content" and they want consumers to willingly buy into that. Their latest sneaky flanking maneuver is what you know as Web apps, but the objective is the same.
If you say yes to either one, centralized computing or software subscriptions, you're actually saying yes to BOTH.
Nancy Reagan had the better advice: Just Say No... to both.
"serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail."
Considering that CGI effects in movie houses have only started approaching effects indistinguishable from reality within the last five or so years this spikes my bullshit meter pretty high.
Factor in Weta/IL&M and the rest are using huge render farms for an extremely non-realtime render process and my meter explodes.
Even if I take the claim at face value and postulate that it is possible to do this then I am forced to wonder about how many concurrent, real-time, 100% realistic scenes it can process at once.
Sounds like the marketing department wet their pants a bit early on this one.
Yes, you can. You need to use the correct ethernet cables with high-level tin alloy shielding and vibration elimination: http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3429.asp
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