CPU: The future of GPU?
Quake 4 image in Ray Tracing Demo
(Credit: Wired)For those who play PC games (and please count me in), the most expensive and necessary investment has always been the graphics card (also known as the GPU, graphics processing unit). High-end cards, from either ATI or nVidia, can cost $500 and up. That's not even factoring in the case, cooling system, power supply, etc., which also have to be equally high-end to support the increasingly large and power-hungry graphics cards. And there seems to be no end to all this. Or is there?
At IDF 2007, there was a demo running Quake 4. There wasn't much to talk about the demonstration itself (the game has been out for a while). As a matter of fact, there was no real game action on the screen--just a character walking around in a smooth 3D environment with excellent-looking lighting and shadow effects. What was impressive was the fact that the computer didn't have a graphics card in it, such as the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, as one would have expected. Instead, the graphics were powered by an Intel multicore CPU that incorporates ray tracing display technology.
Unlike conventional GPUs that use raster graphics techniques to display graphics content, ray tracing models the behavior of light to create shadows and reflections for a more photorealistic presentation of 3D and 2D content. The concept of ray tracing is not new and rather simple: simulating the path that light rays take as they bounce around within the environment, while determining the color of each light ray that strikes the display before reaching the eyes. However, the sheer number of light rays needed to be traced requires a huge amount of computation. That is why this concept had to wait until now to come closer to reality (and indeed very close, judging by the demo), with multicore CPUs. It's predicted that in about three years, there will be computers that use processor-based ray tracing display technology. This means a gaming computer can have less components, be more energy efficient, quieter, and probably cheaper too.
As the ray tracing technique is completely different from the current raster technique, current games will not work with this technique and will need to be re-engineered (or ported) in order to take advantage of the new display platform. This is similar to how an Xbox 360 game will not run on a PS3 and vice versa. However, change takes time, and this is to be expected. And it's not like I am in a rush to discard my recent hefty investment in my SLI system. I will, though, try not to think about how many light rays there are that come out of my screen while flying over Outland.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong.
Dumping all graphics onto the cpu or even integrated chipsets has always been a bad idea if you can afford any type of dedicated card... Its just the way things work. People want their processors clear to be doing the tasks they throw at it thats why they buy a dedicated card.
A deadicated card with the processing Power to do raytracing would be ideal but either one of these ideas could end up being both costly to the consumer (dedicated card wise) or costly performance wise (on the integrated end..)...... Intel seems to kinda be stepping on toes (where i grabbed this article from) with designs for this. I'm still unsure why they havent tried to work more heavily with Nvidia on making integrated chips or the like...
im hoping to a degree that graphics do get better in gaming but i dont think raytracing pushed off onto a processor is going to do it. Once you get to a certain point its going to make things run absurdly slow as it needs to render everything.... Unless we keep upping and upping etc. You also then have the entire subset of people out there that dont have a system capable of it that are then lost so it still needs to be designed with raster in mind.....