When are we gonna start seeing multi-core GPU's?

[The Cobra]

I was just curious about this. We have had milti-core CPU's for a few years now. When will Nvidia and ATI start to bring these out for the higher end video cards?

Just curious.

 

[kllrnohj]

We've had "multi-core" GPU's years before AMD and Intel had multi-core CPUs (and by years I mean since the beginning pretty much)

Unless you don't count each individual rendering pipeline as a core (which I would argue it is, but whatever), in which case we will never have "multi-core" GPU's

In short, the term "multi-core GPU" just doesn't make any sense.

 

[bigdogchris]

Soon as Intels first GPU hits the market it will be a multi-core gpu in the terms that you are thinking.

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

dood! my gtx 285 has 240 cores

 

[kllrnohj]

Soon as Intels first GPU hits the market.

Intel's first GPU will just be a GPU. It doen't differ in design all that much from current GPUs. Its only claim to fame at this point is that it uses x86 instructions, whoop-de-fucking-do.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

i know there was a rumor floating around a little over a year ago with ati talking about trying a multi core gpu.. but i think theres probably a limitation to the way gfx cards are now that wont allow for multi core gpu's.. but who knows.. maybe they will try it..

 

[kllrnohj]

i know there was a rumor floating around a little over a year ago with ati talking about trying a multi core gpu.. but i think theres probably a limitation to the way gfx cards are now that wont allow for multi core gpu's.. but who knows.. maybe they will try it..

There just isn't anything to try. If ATI has spare die space, they will just shovel in some more SPs. If ATI doesn't have the die space, they'll slap on two GPUs (eg, X2 cards).

Of course, that is assuming you are calling current GPUs "single-core" (which they *ARE NOT*). Modern GPUs are ALREADY "MULTI-CORE". GPUs have *ALWAYS* been "multi-core" (multi-core in the sense that multiple independent operations are executing simultaneously)

Please stop comparing CPUs to GPUs, it just doesn't work. At all.

 

[RussianInfantry]

That isn't multicore at all. It's called superscalar execution, and CPUs from the P6 core and up do it too.

 

[astrallite]

Well isn't this an issue of semantics? Intel calls their skulltrail platform an 8-core. AMD's X2 cards have 2 cores on one card, you could call it a multi-core.

 

[Spewn]

GPU's are currently designed to handle processing a lot of things at once that all need to finish together. CPU's were designed to process information that could be read linearly; A list, rather than a picture. Multiple cores were needed to enable, I suppose, a better ability to produce more than one list at once(multitasking, or programs now designed to split their processing over more than one core). Currently, GPU's aren't required to produce more than one picture at a time. Rather they need to produce these pictures as fast as possible.

That said, perhaps nVidia will release a video card specifically designed for their 3D glasses that produces the pairs of frames simultaneously, one per core/GPU?