Multicore systems

[Echo35]

That's well above normal usage for the game, and it runs quite poorly on my own 2.4GHz quad (Q6600).

You've got a q6600 and you're only running it at 2.4?!?! Get with the times! My q6600 is up to 3.2 and that's just on air cooling.

[Fiskbit]

I figure it's probably not a bad idea to have the guy programming the game to run it at a reasonable speed that a lot of users will be seeing.

My Q6600 is at 3.0 GHz, very stable. I've gotten it up to 3.6 GHz, but at voltages in the 1.3's I wasn't entirely pleased with. I'm sure if I fiddled with it, I could get it stable there with a decent voltage, but I never really got around to it. Maybe after this quarter ends. One of my biggest hurdles in overclocking this thing is that I'm using an nForce board, which isn't something very friendly to quad core overclocking, in general. Luckily, I got a pretty good VID (1.225), so I should be able to do 3.6 with acceptable settings. Temperature isn't a big deal; I'm using a really fantastic Vendetta 2 cooler that keeps this thing at temperatures I'm rather happy with.

But yeah, overclocking to 3.0 GHz stable is really easy on air, assuming you have a motherboard that doesn't absolutely suck like my last MSI one did.

[Echo35]

One of my biggest hurdles in overclocking this thing is that I'm using an nForce board, which isn't something very friendly to quad core overclocking, in general.

I've still got my nForce 680i and its working like a champ. I've heard lots of people having issues with quads and nForce, particularly in the voltage area, but I have yet to have any major issues.

[x4000]

Yep, I don't overclock because I don't want my machine to be too good.  Really.

[RCIX]

If only core speeds could be added together to make a single super-fast core. Alas!

That's interesting, sort of like "Weaving" (automated threading) where it executes x number of instructions per second on separate cores but looks like a single core (or is that hyperthreading?)!

[eRe4s3r]

I wonder if a VM could do that ? Theres probably some technical issue with how cpu's share memory (or rather, don't) but it seems to work just fine with the 192+ Core GPUs ?

Imagine maybe we sometimes have a 1024 core cpu where "blocks" of the chip power up depending on demand sort of like a city. And the OS only sees the "virtual" cpu - but the cpu itself can deactivate everything up to 1 single core active in low power mode (1 core to remain usable/functional even in standby) and the same principal for the memory (which is like the sewers of a city) so memory can power up and down in blocks depending on required memory as well)

I think we will see some awesome manycore CPU's in the future... (Which will be much more energy efficient)

[Fiskbit]

RCIX: I don't know what weaving is and wasn't able to find anything online. As for hyperthreading, I don't know too much about it (and have never had to implement it before), but my understanding is that hyperthreading is making one core do multiple threads at a time, typically by having some redundant hardware in that core at areas that are often bottlenecks (like having multiple ALUs).


Some stuff is embarrassingly parallelizable and graphics related things often fall under that category, since you're often doing operations per-pixel (which are typically isolated things), so more cores means more pixels you can work on simultaneously. I worked on a ray tracer recently which had already been multithreaded, so the program was able to do multiple pixels at a time on the dual core lab machines I was using, effectively halving the render time. On my home machine, just the fact that I have a quad core processor would mean it'd render in nearly a quarter the normal time, ignoring processor speed differences. Having lots of cores is often great for graphical applications.

[RCIX]

RCIX: I don't know what weaving is

Lol, i just made that term up on the spot as a "best guess" of what multiple processors doing the work of one would be.

[Kaptein]

RCIX: I don't know what weaving is

Lol, i just made that term up on the spot as a "best guess" of what multiple processors doing the work of one would be.

something like that, but what cpus do, and how effective something is is entirely in the hands of the coder

related,
you can look at something one day and be in awe at how simple and effective your code is, and weeks later reduce cycles by 50% (a 100% speed increase)
backside being, some solutions actually require you to rewrite pretty much everything
its not that your code is bad, its that the better solution requires a different implementation, for example

today though most commercial solutions (such as video games) arent half as optimized as they should be, but its understandable when the competition is high, and all the unnecessary super fx and cool explosions cost more money than making the game fun with game mechanics
in that respect (game mechanics), ai war and (such as) eve online are gems

[Echo35]

Imagine maybe we sometimes have a 1024 core cpu where "blocks" of the chip power up depending on demand sort of like a city. And the OS only sees the "virtual" cpu - but the cpu itself can deactivate everything up to 1 single core active in low power mode (1 core to remain usable/functional even in standby) and the same principal for the memory (which is like the sewers of a city) so memory can power up and down in blocks depending on required memory as well)

OLPC's do that with the hardware to save power. Its actually capable of completely powering off the CPU and leaving whatever image was last displayed on screen in a separate screen buffer. It can also shutdown the CPU and screen and just leave the wireless chip on for mesh networking purposes. Its quite amazing, I wish real laptops would do that.

[eRe4s3r]

I wish my desktop pc would do that.. i don't need 4 cores while browsing the web ^^ Neither do i need all umpteen cores of my GPU while having firefox open, nor all memory.. i wish pc's would finally learn that every little nook thats not needed, should not be under power.

[Fiskbit]

Well, at the very least, your computer likely throttles down your CPU when you're not doing intensive activities in order to keep temperatures and power consumption low. That is, assuming you don't have the feature disabled in your BIOS (if you're using an Intel chip, I believe it's called SpeedStep, which lowers your CPU speed multiplier during low activity). As I type this, my CPU speed is fluctuating between 2.0 and 2.5 GHz, despite being set to 3.0 GHz.

[Echo35]

Well, at the very least, your computer likely throttles down your CPU when you're not doing intensive activities in order to keep temperatures and power consumption low. That is, assuming you don't have the feature disabled in your BIOS (if you're using an Intel chip, I believe it's called SpeedStep, which lowers your CPU speed multiplier during low activity). As I type this, my CPU speed is fluctuating between 2.0 and 2.5 GHz, despite being set to 3.0 GHz.

My Laptop is set to do that under power saving, but I disable it on my Desktop. Speedstep is nice, but with an Overclocked machine, it sometimes dosn't crank up all the way when I run something.