>>> 3) Large memory sets (other than textures)
>> My GPU has access to just under 1GB of RAM. How much do you want?
>>
> 
> They lack virtual ram in a simple sense, last I looked, but you can
> manage that by having your CPU thread move things around as needed.
> Messy and annoying, when the CPU gives you just under 4 gigs in a simple
> 32-bit OS as long as the system has the virtual ram space available. And
> even more than that in 64-bit, if you ask the OS nicely. On the CPU,
> when you need different parts of that 4 gigs of stuff, the OS handles
> it. I suspect that, should the GPU need new data fed into memory, it
> would require more than just stalling the threads while the data is
> moved from ram or paged memory over to the graphics card.

You people must render something utterly different to what I render! I 
think the most demanding scene I ever ran wanted 10MB of RAM or something...

>>> 4) Independent shaders running on distinct units.
>> What exactly do you mean by that?
> 
> I am guessing that he meant the ability to run multiple threads on the
> GPU, instead of running 100 instances of the same thread with slightly
> different starting conditions. I know that my card supports 4 different
> work groups, split over 8 'processors' each.

The information I got is that the GPU runs "bunches" of threads on its 
several-hundred cores, and all the threads in a "bunch" must be 
identical [just operating on different data], but different bunches can 
run utterly different code...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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