nemesis wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>> AMD bought ATI and ATI cards are not innovating anymore.  They realize since
>>> they can't compete with NVidia, better to just try to crap all over their plans
>>> for worldwide domination.
>>   I find your opinion a bit contradictory.
>>
>>   The idea of integrating what are currently two completely separate
>> microprocessors (separated by a relatively slow bus) into one single
>> microchip in such way that even existing programs which do not explicitly
>> take advantage of the current design could take advantage of the new
>> design, sound rather innovative to me.
> 
> It just sounds to me like a CPU-maker afraid of severely multiprocessing units
> growing out of their control buying the second largest of them and trying to
> make them into a mere FPU.
> 
No, actually, what they are doing has the "disadvantage", that if you 
need a GPU upgrade, it means a CPU upgrade, since they are the same. 
*but* you are losing the bottlenecks that come from *having* separate 
components, which means you don't have to even improve the GPU itself, 
to get improved performance. And, yeah, that has some drawbacks as well, 
undoubtedly. In any case, you hear people babbling about CUDA all the 
time, so I figured, "OK, this sounds like it kind of kills the whole idea."

>>   The problem with CUDA is that programs need to support it explicitly,
>> and it is, and always will be limited. If the new AMD design allows
>> currently existing executables to be run on a CPU/GPU-like hybrid and
>> get a considerable speed boost from that, I call that innovative and
>> desirable. Even POV-Ray could someday benefit from that, without having
>> to do anything special about it.
> 
> Funny you don't comment on OpenCl.
> 

Right, because having a single homogeneous processor core, where the GPU 
is integrated, would *completely* hose the idea of OpenCl, which depends 
on, "Being able to handle code execution on *any* machine, without 
regard to the platform." Guess what, anything that boosts performance of 
the CPU/GPU combination by 80% is going to improve the speed of 
*anything* that involves running graphical code, including OpenCl. So, 
yeah, its pretty irrelevant to the issue of whether a "graphics 
specific" language might get hosed by doing this.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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