Nvidia’s Transition to Unified Shader Architecture Will Be Gradual – Chief Scientist.
Nvidia Corp’s chief scientist David Kirk has once again reaffirmed his stance on the unified shader processors by claiming that shortly from now there may be no point to implement them and said that the company would be “gradually†going to the unified architecture.
“The vertex shader, pixel shader, ROP (rasterizing operation), tesselator, other hardware units [of the contemporary graphics processors] will probably evolve into something that can execute everything. But time is required for, [such evolution] is not possible at one time. Change probably will happen progressively,†he said.
Nvidia said that it would be necessary to release a micro-architecture with unified shader processors “when it makes senseâ€, alluding that it may not be the company’s first design that supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, which takes advantage of unified shader processors, which can execute different types of shaders, including pixel and vertex.
The modern rendering pipeline from Nvidia consists of vertex shader processors, texture units, pixel shader processors ROPs. Even though the latter act nearly independently these days, the graphics pipeline of Nvidia’s GeForce 7-series hardware is still streamlined, something which DirectX 10 ideology wants to get rid off.
The new philosophy, which is generally shared by ATI, Microsoft and Nvidia, claims that engines that perform shaders should be unified. Moreover, ATI has split up the pixel pipeline totally in the most recent Radeon X1000-series:
pixel shader processors, texture units and ROPs act totally independently and their workload is managed by a special arbiter processor, which is ideologically close to the DirectX 10 graphics chips, something which ATI’s Richard Huddy called “gradual†architectural transition to DirectX 10 back in 2004 and something which will be adopted by Nvidia Corp. too.
Earlier published rumours suggest that Nvidia’s code-named G80 graphics processing unit (GPU) will incorporate 48 pixel shader processors and an unknown number of vertex shader processors, some unofficial sources said. The chip is still expected to support feature-set of DirectX 10 along with Shader Model 4.0, even though it will not take advantage of the unified shader processors that can compute both pixel and vertex shaders.
The architecture of the G80 (or the GeForce 8800, if the company decides to follow its current nomenclature) should be totally different from the GeForce 7 (G70, G71) or the Radeon X1000 (R520, R580), however, some ideology may be similar to that of ATI’s code-named R580.
[break=ATI releases DirectX 10 SDK]
ATI releases DirectX 10 SDK
Game developers and animation artists today received a new software development kit (SDK) based on Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 10 multimedia engine. The software will allow a first peak at new effects such as shadow volume extrusion and streaming out of animation data.
ATI said that the new SDK includes more than a dozen of new samples which demonstrate "what could be possible with DirectX 10" and provides tools to "start creating the kind of breakthrough content the industry saw at the advent of DirectX 9."
Besides taking advantage of some new technologies such as render-to-vertex buffer techniques, shadow volume extrusion and streaming out of animation data to achieve more realistic graphics and animations, it is ATI's unified shader architecture that may have a bigger impact on developers with the release of DirectX 10. First introduced in its graphics processor design for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, the company will leverage the technology to enable physics effects in its products.
Considered to be one of the major growth areas in gaming, ATI promises developers that the SDK "shows how [to] best tap into this technology to incorporate techniques such as water simulation, inverse kinematics and simple collision detection." The company did not say how efficient this approach will be if compared to a dedicated physics processor or a competing solution from Nvidia, but it is apparent that ATI is accelerating its development in moving towards physics effects.
"ATI's GPUs are incredibly powerful and have the ability to perform powerful tasks such as physics that give developers a greater range of realism and sophistication for their games," said Neal Robison, director of ISV relations at ATI. This confirms ATI's previously outlined strategy to circumvent a dedicated processor for physics processing and rely on dynamic load balancing to calculate a natural interaction of objects.
In a similar strategy, Nvidia recently announced to provide physics capability in dual-graphics SLI environments through a driver update. Ageia announced its physics processor in March of this year.
ATI provides its new SDK through its developer program.
Nvidia Corp’s chief scientist David Kirk has once again reaffirmed his stance on the unified shader processors by claiming that shortly from now there may be no point to implement them and said that the company would be “gradually†going to the unified architecture.
“The vertex shader, pixel shader, ROP (rasterizing operation), tesselator, other hardware units [of the contemporary graphics processors] will probably evolve into something that can execute everything. But time is required for, [such evolution] is not possible at one time. Change probably will happen progressively,†he said.
Nvidia said that it would be necessary to release a micro-architecture with unified shader processors “when it makes senseâ€, alluding that it may not be the company’s first design that supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, which takes advantage of unified shader processors, which can execute different types of shaders, including pixel and vertex.
The modern rendering pipeline from Nvidia consists of vertex shader processors, texture units, pixel shader processors ROPs. Even though the latter act nearly independently these days, the graphics pipeline of Nvidia’s GeForce 7-series hardware is still streamlined, something which DirectX 10 ideology wants to get rid off.
The new philosophy, which is generally shared by ATI, Microsoft and Nvidia, claims that engines that perform shaders should be unified. Moreover, ATI has split up the pixel pipeline totally in the most recent Radeon X1000-series:
pixel shader processors, texture units and ROPs act totally independently and their workload is managed by a special arbiter processor, which is ideologically close to the DirectX 10 graphics chips, something which ATI’s Richard Huddy called “gradual†architectural transition to DirectX 10 back in 2004 and something which will be adopted by Nvidia Corp. too.
Earlier published rumours suggest that Nvidia’s code-named G80 graphics processing unit (GPU) will incorporate 48 pixel shader processors and an unknown number of vertex shader processors, some unofficial sources said. The chip is still expected to support feature-set of DirectX 10 along with Shader Model 4.0, even though it will not take advantage of the unified shader processors that can compute both pixel and vertex shaders.
The architecture of the G80 (or the GeForce 8800, if the company decides to follow its current nomenclature) should be totally different from the GeForce 7 (G70, G71) or the Radeon X1000 (R520, R580), however, some ideology may be similar to that of ATI’s code-named R580.
[break=ATI releases DirectX 10 SDK]
ATI releases DirectX 10 SDK
Game developers and animation artists today received a new software development kit (SDK) based on Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 10 multimedia engine. The software will allow a first peak at new effects such as shadow volume extrusion and streaming out of animation data.
ATI said that the new SDK includes more than a dozen of new samples which demonstrate "what could be possible with DirectX 10" and provides tools to "start creating the kind of breakthrough content the industry saw at the advent of DirectX 9."
Besides taking advantage of some new technologies such as render-to-vertex buffer techniques, shadow volume extrusion and streaming out of animation data to achieve more realistic graphics and animations, it is ATI's unified shader architecture that may have a bigger impact on developers with the release of DirectX 10. First introduced in its graphics processor design for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, the company will leverage the technology to enable physics effects in its products.
Considered to be one of the major growth areas in gaming, ATI promises developers that the SDK "shows how [to] best tap into this technology to incorporate techniques such as water simulation, inverse kinematics and simple collision detection." The company did not say how efficient this approach will be if compared to a dedicated physics processor or a competing solution from Nvidia, but it is apparent that ATI is accelerating its development in moving towards physics effects.
"ATI's GPUs are incredibly powerful and have the ability to perform powerful tasks such as physics that give developers a greater range of realism and sophistication for their games," said Neal Robison, director of ISV relations at ATI. This confirms ATI's previously outlined strategy to circumvent a dedicated processor for physics processing and rely on dynamic load balancing to calculate a natural interaction of objects.
In a similar strategy, Nvidia recently announced to provide physics capability in dual-graphics SLI environments through a driver update. Ageia announced its physics processor in March of this year.
ATI provides its new SDK through its developer program.