Future GPUs to consist of several cores
 

The GPUs that we are used to today comprise of several parts that are all joined together by a high speed interconnect. Now, imagine separating the core out into several chips, again connecting all of them by an interconnect. The great advantage would be that to increase performance you would simply increase the number of cores, design of GPUs could also be simplified.

For example, low end cards could have 2 of these "cores", middle range cards would utilize 4, and high end cards would boast 8 processing units.

The Inquirer reports that this is exactly what we can expect from the AMD/ATI R700 chip, and perhaps NVIDIA's G90.

Source: The Inq

Ummm... it's about time someone actually came out and said this - kind of overstating the obvious (in a way).

Exactly what I was thinking - if someone has been sitting there thinking "how can we make graphics cards faster" and only just came out with this I'm very worried.

I don't necessarily see this as good. Video card power requirements are getting just absolutely fucking ridiculous. Aren't you suppose to you know, create more speed AND consume less power? If you ask me the video card industry needs a solid bitch slap to the face.

In an ideal world, yes. Bitch slap those idiots!

This is only half way though.
In the future, hopefully not too far into the future, we will have only a single proccesing unit, that will consist of many many cores - CPU cores and GPU cores. There will be only one socket and under it will be over a dozen core. One core will perform math calculations, another will render one part of the image, etc. Its kind of a CPU/GPU combination, but in the future we will have so many cores, that each core will be set to do a certain task - one will subtract, one will add.
Thats what the future holds. I cant imagine anything being better than that, so that is how it will always remain. The only that will change is the speed of the cores, and at some point they will have become powerfull enough to render an image wich looks nothing less than a photo.. that will be the end of modern technological use.. and i dont know what will happen later.

Ummm, let's take CPUs as an example.


Single cores got hot and fast (Pentium 4 EE). Then they went dual core with only a little more power, but much better performance in applications which supported them. Almost doubling processing power for less than a 25% increase in power. (A64 X2s)

Then die shrinks came into play and better architectures were developed, with renewed emphasis on performance/watt. (65W TDP conroes and 35W+65W AM2s)




What makes you think that this will just make things more power hungry? Especially when there's a VERY similar thing that happened VERY recently with just the opposite outcome.


We are at the end of Single core graphics cards (GX2s count as single). With SLi, Crossfire, and Unified shaders, programs are already equipped to do rendering in a massively parallel way; there won't even be the same multithreaded application thing CPUs went through. When they add another core, even at a slower speed, the performance gains will be above 50% right off the bat. Add some memory bandwidth and it goes higher, get into second generation multi core graphics cards and TDPs will drop, it's not like they really can go much higher anyways (like physical limits of the Silicon and the PCB.)


Yes I agree things are far too power hungry, but to be cynical and say it will just be worse soon, with evidence otherwise, that's just wrong.

Well manufacturers will try and find an equilibrium between power and performance in most cases. If people will buy it, they'll make it.

i want them to release basically a daughterboard that has a Unified Graphics Port (i should copyright that) that all you have to do is buy a mobo like thing and you could upgrade it like you do a cpu that would be perfect cause you could pick what kind and how fast our ram if one part broke you didnt have to replace the whole card and it would be easier to upgrade in the future

Or just have a motherboard with already built in slots/sockets for GPU and graphics ram rather than an extra daughter board.

yeah that works to but my way you could upgrade the daughter board and still keep your org. mobo you know in case a new UGP socket was released or you got "SLI/crossfire" equiped daughterboard and wanted the other

We had daughter boards in the past. The problem is in the connection. The more connectors, the more failures. The connector is also less of a conductor, and insulated conductor moreso than integrated circuts. Thus the move to LGA Land Grid Array cpu interfaces as well as ball and socket type memory interfaces on PCB's.

One option would be to have the same PCB for all card of one type, with sockets for a set number of cores. The PCB would come with two (or four, etc), and these can be added to without replacing the board as the user requires more power

thats what i was thinking stordoff

I think because of amd teaming with ATI, we can expect swappable cores in the near future, as well as high end gfx built into cpus. The RAM for a video card should be able to be added in smaller sticks, something like SD cards or something(of course, DDR3, ect) and it would be user upgradable, based on a video ram bus on the daughter board itself, not based on motherboard capability.

my bet is that cpu's will become slots again :p

What if they had like a Motherboard Crossfire functionality. You could basically have 2 computers acting like one. Think about it, haveing 4 G80s, 2 x6800s, 4 sticks of 1 GB DDR2, 4 hard drives but 2 + 2 in raid 0. 2 dvd burners... an extra large case featureing 32 fans... about 20 grand in USD to buy the damn thing and a 400$ electric bill in winter. But it would be very fast.

wait omg they should do this.
Have a small board that you can upgrade your GPU and GRAM (Graphics Random Access Memory). The parts would be designed to fit on the card so that it dosnt get so heavy with a huge heatsink/fan for the GPU etc... but you wouldnt need to buy a whole new board just to get a GPU and GRAM. That would pretty much SAVE money because you dont need to buy a new board.
crap cdawall already said it :shadedshu