Lucid Hydra Technology Discussion Thread

[ProfessorKaos64]

After reading quite a bit about Hydra and more specifically, Lucid Hydra, what are people's thouhts on where this is going and what good it can do for the computing world that SLI does in a sloppy way? Alternate Frame and Split Frame/Tiling are two technologies Lucid Hydra aims to make better and add some of its own. The chip resides between the Northbridge and the GPU (s), acting as sort of a traffic copy, diverting traffic to GPU 1 or GPU 2. It first grabs information from the CPU, intercepting Direct X and OpenGL calls from the game or application destined fro the GPUs. Hydra analyzes this information, breaking it down into tasks, and then gives this to the GPUs. It tries to break up the workload in a intelligent manner, making use of all the resources and capabilities of each GPU, estimating what each GPU can do, calculating its performance levels, and then sends the final OK GO to the chip to delegate the task or tasks to GPU 1 or GPU 2. Once the GPU's are done, they send the data back to the Hydra chip, where its compiled , and from there the final "scene" is sent to the GPU's and then to the display.

Benefits, Advantages, Disadvantages? Where do you guys see this going currently and in the future?

 

[Mega666]

Yawn, stillborn technology.

 

[Udgnim]

pros

- it works

cons

- it doesn't work as well as SLI or Crossfire
- expensive
- dependent on continued Lucid driver support to improve

 

[SeaFoam]

It's a good idea, but it just doesn't work in its current form.

I can't believe they would release a product that has no use.

Actually, I can. People are dumb enough to buy it.

 

[vengence]

Yawn, stillborn technology.

pros

- it works

cons

- it doesn't work as well as SLI or Crossfire
- expensive
- dependent on continued Lucid driver support to improve

These two posts pretty much sum it up. You can add cost to the list as well as right now, it's only avaliable on a mobo that is 50$ MORE expensive than a P55 classified.