Thursday, October 16, 2008

Hardware GPU / SPU / CPU

I follow all the discussions about the future of game hardware with talks about Larrabee and GPUs and the death of 3D APIs and -depending on the view point- different hardware designs. 

The thing I figure is that all this is quite interesting and inspiring but our cycles of change in computer graphics and graphics programming are pretty long. Most of the stuff we do is based on research papers that were released more than 30 years ago and written on typewriters.
Why should any new piece of hardware change all this in a very short amount of time?

There is a game market out there that grows in double digit percentage numbers on all kind of hardware. How much of this market and its growth would be influenced by any new hardware?

Some of the best distributed game hardware is pretty old and following most standards, sub-performant. Nevertheless it offers entertainment that people enjoy.

So how important is it if we program a CPU/SPU/GPU or whatever we call the next thing. Give me a washing machine with a display and I make an entertainment machine with robo rumble out of it.

4 comments:

Mike D. Smith said...

You nailed it dude! Hardware doesn't make art. It enables it. We're to the point where we're getting diminishing returns. I think it will be a while before an improvement in hardware technology makes a significant impact on game play. Note: I said hardware technology, NOT how creatively it is used (Wii case in point).

Vincent Scheib said...

;) The new hardware isn't for the consumers, it's for us, the developers. Without it, our jobs would become a bit boring.

Tom Hanks said...

Hi
I have a blog based on UK mobile phones. The blog is regularly updated and have a page rank of "3". I found your blog quite useful for my blog's visitors. I want to exchange link with your blog, which will be fruitful for both of us.
My blog is http://orangemobilesphoneshop.blogspot.com/ .

If you are interested, please contact me at tomhanks911@gmail.com

Wolfgang Engel said...

Tom Hanks: this is a very cool side but it does not target the same group as my side. I target graphics programmers.

Vince: you wouldn't enjoy making a washing machine an entertainment center? Think about a mech warrior game where you ride on the washing machine ... everytime you are hit it rumbles and you can really hear the engines start up. All this and home delivery for a good price :-) ... just kidding.