Hyper Threading Technology Thread

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by metz2000, 23 Nov 2002.

  1. metz2000

    metz2000 What's a Dremel?

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    Hey, this is a thread for any views on Intel's hyperthreading technology. Please post any relevant links below and of course discuss the technology!

    One question I have is this...
    If hyperthreading can be used in CPUs, then why not in GPUs?
     
  2. KevinOwns

    KevinOwns What's a Dremel?

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    Well, right now unless Intel were to release the technology to nVidia or ATI they would have to start from scratch.

    And honestly, it wasn't that impressing. Sure, it squeezed out a few extra points on the benchmarks, but it wasn't anything that would make a significant performance increase.
     
  3. JADS

    JADS Et arma et verba vulnerant

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    Question do you run multiple games at once? Hyperthreading only deals with thread level parallelism.
     
  4. metz2000

    metz2000 What's a Dremel?

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    But if it was hard coded into the game's code, so that textures were handled in a separate thread to another part of the graphics, then this may create a performance gain... I don't know... I'm no expert... just an idea.

    ::Metz::
     
  5. Hargle

    Hargle What's a Dremel?

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    Generally you have to do things in the graphics pipeline in order so multiple threads here wouldn't be as easy. In games however multiple threads can be used to seperate say rendering and game logic. Game logic might only be run at 10 fps but you would still want to run the renderer as fast as you could to show off your hardware, right. Not necessarily a job that requires multiple threads but it can be used here quite successfully.

    As a rule though inside the GPU everything is done in a very strict order and so any large level of parallelism in the graphics processing would be difficult (and hence probably not worth the extra effort). I'm sure there's plenty of low level threading going on though, but I don't know enough about things at that level to do anything more than speculate :sigh:
     
  6. xen0morph

    xen0morph Bargain wine connoisseur

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    There would generally be no point in ht'ing teh gfx core, as everything has to strictly be in sync anway.

    Also very complex drivers would have to be written to take advantage of this.
     
  7. Fowler

    Fowler mmm Cosworth

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    so basically at this time in life the Hyper-threading technology is of not much use just yet?

    Pentium seem to be trying to make a big deal of it so theyre must be somein worthwhile theyre surely!

    Who cares , if it works il use it!

    :hehe:
     
  8. Loz

    Loz Blah Blah

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    Do you mean Intel? Whether its useless or not they're going to make a big deal out of it as their chip has it and AMDs dont! Whether it makes a difference or not is irrellevant for marketing purposes.
     
  9. Fowler

    Fowler mmm Cosworth

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    Yes I meant Intel , was in a rush, yes but as a user I want to know if the hyper threading technology will actually benefit intel followers??!

    :confused:
     
  10. bradford010

    bradford010 Bradon Frohman

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    The point of HT is not to get a straight performance boost but to greatly increase the efficiency of multi-tasking.

    As for Intel releasing the technology, I don't think it's really an issue ;)
     
  11. xen0morph

    xen0morph Bargain wine connoisseur

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    Wasn't there already a thread about this :D
     
  12. Digitalblueshift

    Digitalblueshift What's a Dremel?

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    It is somewhat, I remember reading somwhere thet the PS, and PS2 use a processor type that relies heavily aon massive amounts of parallel data between the CPU and GPU. Each one executes several chunks of code at once.
     

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