Multi core processor support in CoD

[Heliocon]

Of course they will have dual core support, standard is 4 cores now, by 2012 will be 6 or 8 (high range 32nm intel and the new AMD Bulldozer). Not that this is 8+ threads since each core is also 2 virtualy cores. So real question is will they support hyperthreading?

Hopefully the engine can be edited so that it works on hexa and octacore efficiently.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Of course they will have dual core support, standard is 4 cores now, by 2012 will be 6 or 8 (high range 32nm intel and the new AMD Bulldozer). Not that this is 8+ threads since each core is also 2 virtualy cores. So real question is will they support hyperthreading?

Well, if they manage to balance 4 threads that really does something useful and don't spend too much time on synchronization/sleep/wait/join so the main render thread can not continue they can start thinking of that Multi threading is good for a lot of stuff but in a game where the game render loop runs at 100 fps you can't wait 10 ms for some shared memory that is locked by the AI thread that is busy or you will get problems... Ok, for some tasks like loading data or textures in the background that does not mess with shared memory it can be useful but to spread ai, physics, net code etc on different threads and really gain performance you easily end up with code that is a pure hell to debug or tune... Multi threading works best for stuff that does not share stuff - like in a business application where one thread can chunk tasks that run for a while with no interaction with the other threads and then return a result. Thats not how a game works unfortunately...

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by mazex

Well, if they manage to balance 4 threads that really does something useful and don't spend too much time on synchronization/sleep/wait/join so the main render thread can not continue they can start thinking of that Multi threading is good for a lot of stuff but in a game where the game render loop runs at 100 fps you can't wait 10 ms for some shared memory that is locked by the AI thread that is busy or you will get problems... Ok, for some tasks like loading data or textures in the background that does not mess with shared memory it can be useful but to spread ai, physics, net code etc on different threads and really gain performance you easily end up with code that is a pure hell to debug or tune... Multi threading works best for stuff that does not share stuff - like in a business application where one thread can chunk tasks that run for a while with no interaction with the other threads and then return a result. Thats not how a game works unfortunately...

uhhh what? Sorry you got the mechanics here very wrong. First off the CPU does not render anything, thats the GPU. Second shared memory.... lol?
3. I think you misunderstand the mechanics of how threading works, it activly assigns tasks to each thread, it does not "lock them" to one task. If it does thats extremely poor programming and will not be present due to the fact that it would most likely be incompatible with W7+DX11 dynamic load management. The threads are not assigned like AI, Physics etc, they just all run tasks in parallel, often they will run constantly one area of the game but the whole idea of multithreading is to eliminate the wait. In a singlecore/thread it has to do AI+Physics+etc+etc all in single pieces and rotate, multi threads eliminate this completely.

Anyway again there is no shared memory when you refer to textures etc. Thats GPU ram and is seperate from your volatile Ram, your CPU Cache, and your HD cache. Unfortunetly it seems games do not run the way you think they run...

*oh btw edit: most / many modern Mobos have integrated network chips, even if not they use very little ram. My intel 980x has 12 threads, I challenge COD to use that. The result is I can have 5 cores/10 threads dedicated to the game at 3.3-4ghz, and have the last core run win7 + steam + networking / whatever else in the background while the rest is completely dedicated to the software.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

uhhh what? Sorry you got the mechanics here very wrong. First off the CPU does not render anything, thats the GPU. Second shared memory.... lol?
3. I think you misunderstand the mechanics of how threading works, it activly assigns tasks to each thread, it does not "lock them" to one task. If it does thats extremely poor programming and will not be present due to the fact that it would most likely be incompatible with W7+DX11 dynamic load management. The threads are not assigned like AI, Physics etc, they just all run tasks in parallel, often they will run constantly one area of the game but the whole idea of multithreading is to eliminate the wait. In a singlecore/thread it has to do AI+Physics+etc+etc all in single pieces and rotate, multi threads eliminate this completely.

Anyway again there is no shared memory when you refer to textures etc. Thats GPU ram and is seperate from your volatile Ram, your CPU Cache, and your HD cache. Unfortunetly it seems games do not run the way you think they run...

*oh btw edit: most / many modern Mobos have integrated network chips, even if not they use very little ram. My intel 980x has 12 threads, I challenge COD to use that. The result is I can have 5 cores/10 threads dedicated to the game at 3.3-4ghz, and have the last core run win7 + steam + networking / whatever else in the background while the rest is completely dedicated to the software.

Well, I've done multi threaded c++ programming for 20 years and I have a feeling you have not? Never heard of shared memory and locks? Think the threads create themselves? C'mon...

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by mazex

Well, I've done multi threaded c++ programming for 20 years and I have a feeling you have not? Never heard of shared memory and locks? Think the threads create themselves? C'mon...

+1

Designing a game engine to make full use of large numbers of cores is a nightmare that no developer can afford, Physx is completely useless for flight model calculations, and a graphics engine that runs entirely on the GPU is a pipe dream. All those expectations are probably based on CPU & GPU vendors' PR, who like to make fantastic promises that developers are supposed to fulfill. As usual, real life is a little bit more complicated:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/s...th-multicore/0

Bracing for longwinded copy+paste from Wikipedia/Tomshardware.

[Dano]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Bracing for longwinded copy+paste from Wikipedia/Tomshardware.

Teehee

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Bracing for longwinded copy+paste from Wikipedia/Tomshardware.

Someday I'm going to be wrong! But not today!

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by The Kraken

+1

Designing a game engine to make full use of large numbers of cores is a nightmare that no developer can afford, Physx is completely useless for flight model calculations, and a graphics engine that runs entirely on the GPU is a pipe dream. All those expectations are probably based on CPU & GPU vendors' PR, who like to make fantastic promises that developers are supposed to fulfill. As usual, real life is a little bit more complicated:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/s...th-multicore/0

Wait is this in response to me? I havent mentioned PhysX in the thread that I am aware off...
Graphics engines do run completely on the GPU, a graphics engine doesnt mean the entire game, a graphics engine renders and creates the geometry and textures etc.