The Source Engine & Multi-Core

November 2, 2006 7:16 AM

Related to the news below is this bit-tech.net article about the Source Engine's support for multicore CPUs. Valve's Gabe Newell, Tom Leonard, Brian Jacobson and Jay Stelly talk about what becomes possible with the technology's multithreading support.

Maarten Goldstein

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Valve
Intel

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sharkII

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November 2, 2006 7:53 AM

What a great article.

I wonder if their multi-core approach couldn't just consider a dedicated physics processor as another core that they can offload to, transparently, without having to code anything else for it?

well, I guess they would have to use the specific physics API for that card...

I dunno.
- ezanga
  
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  November 2, 2006 9:58 AM
  
  I think you are correct. Not only would you have to use their specific API but you'd have essentially a highly specialized processor that's very efficient at PPU functions but not with general purpose processing functions. In the end with the overhead and lack of flexibility you might as well just use a "normal' CPU core.
  - sharkII
    
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    November 2, 2006 11:04 AM
    
    If their main thread that handles all the core shuffling (this logic here, that logic there, etc) can push all the physics off to this card though, that would be ideal.
  - Liquid
    
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    November 3, 2006 2:56 PM
    
    It'd be cool if you could write your physics in an API, and it's engine would scale up or down depending on wether you had a dedicated card, software emulation running on it's own core, or software emulation on a shared core. I would imagine it's inevitible.