Hmm, I think raytracing can actually be done with CUDA. (there are implementations already, think one even opensource, where the CUDA is as fast as a dual core CPU or the like. And that althought the technology has only been available for a year and most didn't use it as on windows you had to decide between cuda or gaming driver till 169.21 drivers ie very recently). Problem is that the mathematical and especially parallel numerical research done in the past based on totally different programming paradigms than ultra parallel scalar operation usage.
Thats the reason why the PS3 might need forever to get to the same level as the X360, the Cell suffers from the same thing, its just a totally new way of programming.
The parallel numerical computation research group at ETH actually just started in researching the CUDA capabilities, CELL researches were started about a year ago, so an extremely young research and usage sector.
But especially due to the Cell I believe that the paradigms needed for this kind of processing unit will appear and that more the sooner than the later as they are important to IBM after all.
@josh: I would be more than happy if ATI would write a CUDA driver just to point that out even thought I'll never again get one. But for support of more intelligent agent behavior for example it would be great to have the possibility to use it in next generation games, because NNs are something that is quite easily doable due to the way the data in an NN is stored and how CUDA or better the GPU memory bar and shared memory work.
Thats the reason why the PS3 might need forever to get to the same level as the X360, the Cell suffers from the same thing, its just a totally new way of programming.
The parallel numerical computation research group at ETH actually just started in researching the CUDA capabilities, CELL researches were started about a year ago, so an extremely young research and usage sector.
But especially due to the Cell I believe that the paradigms needed for this kind of processing unit will appear and that more the sooner than the later as they are important to IBM after all.
@josh: I would be more than happy if ATI would write a CUDA driver just to point that out even thought I'll never again get one. But for support of more intelligent agent behavior for example it would be great to have the possibility to use it in next generation games, because NNs are something that is quite easily doable due to the way the data in an NN is stored and how CUDA or better the GPU memory bar and shared memory work.