Comment by exDM69
10 years ago
You seem to think that GPU programming is somehow easy. You should try it and see what you think.
Yes, there is massive amount of power available but it's not easy to use effectively. You need a different mental model how things work, there's very little shared state and all the algorithms used have to match the model of computation.
Using the GPU almost exclusively, generating everything procedurally is a massive accomplishment and much more difficult than "normal" CPU+GPU programming or using just the CPU.
I do not share your view that this would be somehow less impressive because it uses the GPU.
I used to do GPU programming. Brief foray into it for game programming plus a then-new field called "GPGPU" pushing its limits. Think I implemented some crypto or physics stuff on one. I've followed some of the recent efforts.
My points of comparison are what they're doing vs what it's designed to do with what vs what other people do with that and other hardware. It looks great with lots of efficiency. I'll give them that. It's just way less impressive to me given they're using a powerful graphics card to mostly do what it's designed to do plus their innovation.
Pre "GPGPU" era of mostly fixed function 3d accelerators is hardly comparable to modern programmable GPUs.
> It's just way less impressive to me given they're using a powerful graphics card to mostly do what it's designed to do ...
This demo isn't at all what the GPU is "designed to do". The all-procedural graphics is way different from drawing artist-generated 3d models from memory while being orchestrated by the CPU. While it is more commonplace today, this demo was pioneering work in "all GPU" procedural graphics.
"Pre "GPGPU" era of mostly fixed function 3d accelerators is hardly comparable to modern programmable GPUs."
Which people used to do things they weren't designed for at all in so-called GPGPU work. The results defaulted on really, clever work. It's why I brought it up.
"The all-procedural graphics is way different from drawing artist-generated 3d models from memory while being orchestrated by the CPU. While it is more commonplace today, this demo was pioneering work in "all GPU" procedural graphics."
This is where I likely slipped up. I forgot how old this one was. I retract that claim then.
From the point of view of the hackers who programmed Spacewar on the PDP-1, the C64 is special purpose hardware with a powerful graphics card designed to make it trivial to implement Space Invaders.