You already have a CPU and a GPU, prepare to get a PPU

Post by **Grudge** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:14 am

Special "physics" cards, to go along with your CPU and graphics card:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/08 ... 19895.html

http://www.gamers-depot.com/interviews/agiea/001.htm

Post by **Dr_Watson** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:23 am

sounds like the idea the atari jaguar and ps2 had. multiple processors dedicated to specific tasks.
their success hinges in the same manner on developers actually coding for it.

Post by **MKJ** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:27 am

yea read about this a few days ago. quite nifty IMO. just wait till nvidia adds one of those to their gfx cards though.. donth hink many people will sacrifice another slot for some extra physics, so it wont be a standard as a stand alone

Post by **Dr_Watson** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:48 am

i'm thinking integrated motherboard chips are the way to go. a daughter card seems too potentially troublesome to maintain full compatability.

Post by **mjrpes** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:09 am

I'm waiting for the OPP. Yeah, you know me.

Post by **MKJ** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:16 am

Dr_Watson wrote:i'm thinking integrated motherboard chips are the way to go. a daughter card seems too potentially troublesome to maintain full compatability.

even better even, yea, but im guessing a thirdparty gpu developer will pick it up before mobo devs do

Post by **Dr_Watson** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:17 am

i dunno.... i could see asus jumping all over this...
as far as nvidia and ati are concerned i would expect them to make their own rather than licensing 3rd party equipment.

Post by **Eraser** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:19 am

Dr_Watson wrote:i'm thinking integrated motherboard chips are the way to go. a daughter card seems too potentially troublesome to maintain full compatability.

I'm actually for a modular setup. Integrated into mobo, okay, but at least allow me to replace individual bits without having to buy an all new motherboard (and, as often is the case with a mobo replacement, a new CPU and compatible memory as well).

Integrated LAN and sound is a good thing IMO, as that's not something you'll replace that often (the sound and LAN on my nForce2 is excellent) but a videocard is too expensive and upgraded more often than my motherboard.

Post by **Geebs** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:20 am

It's a bit fucking pointless when the major chip manufacturers are about to go dual core; seeing as most games don't multithread well, all you have to do is take advantage of the second processor.

I imagine the market for this is going to be the sort of tossers who buy special "gaming RAM"

Post by **mjrpes** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:29 am

Geebs wrote:It's a bit fucking pointless when the major chip manufacturers are about to go dual core; seeing as most games don't multithread well, all you have to do is take advantage of the second processor.

But this could be a big thing if the advantages of having specialized hardware have overwhelming performance benefits. CPUs are designed to run all kinds of tasks, but suck at certain specialized tasks, such as graphics processing. That is why we have GPUs. If physics cards have overwhelming performance benefits like GPUs, then dual core CPUs won't help, and this will be a big thing.

Post by **Grudge** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:30 am

Yeah it needs to be integrated either in the motherboard chipsets or on the graphics cards to ever become a reality as far as I can see.

Post by **Geebs** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:36 am

Geebs wrote:I imagine the market for this is going to be the sort of tossers who buy special "gaming RAM" with flashing LEDs on it.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:28 pm

What was your first guess?

Mine was "Penis Power Unit"

Post by **Ryoki** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:34 pm

"Perfect Pheromone Usage"

Post by **glossy** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 1:04 pm

mjrpes wrote:
Geebs wrote:It's a bit fucking pointless when the major chip manufacturers are about to go dual core; seeing as most games don't multithread well, all you have to do is take advantage of the second processor.
But this could be a big thing if the advantages of having specialized hardware have overwhelming performance benefits. CPUs are designed to run all kinds of tasks, but suck at certain specialized tasks, such as graphics processing. That is why we have GPUs. If physics cards have overwhelming performance benefits like GPUs, then dual core CPUs won't help, and this will be a big thing.

but with 100% of the first processor threader thing going towards calculating stuff for the game, the second processor threader thing could be 90% dedicated to physics with all the graphics being done by the GPU would have a significant performance gain.

it all comes down to what specifications and little bells and whistles are given to the programmer to play with, and how well the programmer can utilise it all. as far as i can see a PPU would be completely pointless -- used only for video games, and even then utilised occasionally and probably not being used as efficiently as a hyper-threaded CPU could.

Post by **Grudge** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:53 pm

glossy, whith your reasoning we wouldn't need a dedicated GPU either - the dual core CPU could handle that too. The main point here is that a dedicated PPU is so much better at doing physics calculations than a general purpose CPU, and as games are moving towards being more physics-based, it will become necessary to have one.

Remember that the only real use for an advanced GPU is games too. This is the equivalent to when games moved from 2D to 3D.

Post by **Mogul** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:56 pm

Having a powerful GPU and a good PPU would free up sooo much work on the processor. It's a good move, in my opinion.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:05 pm

Some graphics engines still need a lot CPU power.
Optimize the graphics engines better I say, then start thinking about new stuff for us to blow our money on.

Post by **shadd_.** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:14 pm

physics are becoming such a large part of games that this was inevitable.

Post by **Canis** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:24 pm

I'd be willing to bet this is the future of computing, where the individual aspects of computing are distributed to dedicated processors rather than crunched through one central processor. They've already done that wiith the GPU and audio processors, but there is a lot more that can be processed separately from the CPU. It's only a matter of time before we have 5-6 separate processing units we'll need to have.

Post by **blood.angel** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:25 pm

Wait til theres an AIPU.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:28 pm

Skynet?

Post by **SplishSplash** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:29 pm

Canis wrote:It's only a matter of time before we have 5-6 separate processing units we'll need to have.

Esp. cause they can cash in on every single card we have to buy.
But then more and more people would switch to consoles.

Post by **blood.angel** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:33 pm

Not unreasonable.
If physics are to be unloaded from the CPU it doesnt take a leap of thought to assume that the AI will be to soon.

Post by **Canis** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:34 pm

I'd be willing to bet the "CPU" becomes only a switch/controller that efficiently distributes tasks to the other processing components as they become more specialized and more efficient than the CPU at processing various tasks.