I've seen a few papers on raytrcing on the gpu/simd etc, but it was all pretty ugly stuff for not all that much benefit. One bunch of dudes even built their own FPGA which is an intriguing thought!
The technique I'm using is 'inspired' by Carmack's mention of spare voxel octrees, and the algorithm branches very unpredictably and really depends on having the ability to halt or 'early out' at an unpredictable time. Recursion woould also be nice (though not 100% necessary) as you'd be able to do reflection/refraction too, although this isn't the point of the algorithm. All in all, it just doesn't seem that cuda friendly.
The Tilera thing is interesting, but almost seems *too* complete - each core has its own MMU etc and can even run its own OS! What I'd really like for this is something with a simple, low-transistor count architecture (eg: MIPS?) which can be multicored to the max but is still a 'proper' CPU.
I don't actually think there will be a 'winner' in the CPU vs GPU wars - having the flexibility of a PC per core is sometimes good, having the grunt to do a gazillion things at once is sometimes good. Depends on the job/algorithm, and I suspect both CPU's and GPU's will just continue to grow more and more cores.
And no, this is nothing to do with Blitz...just a fun thang.
The technique I'm using is 'inspired' by Carmack's mention of spare voxel octrees, and the algorithm branches very unpredictably and really depends on having the ability to halt or 'early out' at an unpredictable time. Recursion woould also be nice (though not 100% necessary) as you'd be able to do reflection/refraction too, although this isn't the point of the algorithm. All in all, it just doesn't seem that cuda friendly.
The Tilera thing is interesting, but almost seems *too* complete - each core has its own MMU etc and can even run its own OS! What I'd really like for this is something with a simple, low-transistor count architecture (eg: MIPS?) which can be multicored to the max but is still a 'proper' CPU.
I don't actually think there will be a 'winner' in the CPU vs GPU wars - having the flexibility of a PC per core is sometimes good, having the grunt to do a gazillion things at once is sometimes good. Depends on the job/algorithm, and I suspect both CPU's and GPU's will just continue to grow more and more cores.
And no, this is nothing to do with Blitz...just a fun thang.