Intel's Yorkfield CPU is a Ray-Trace monster

Yorkfield is a Ray-Trace monster

By Theo Valich in Leipzig: Wednesday 22 August 2007, 13:56
CHIPZILLA SHOWED A DEMONSTRATION of Ray-Tracer on its latest
processors, and we have to say that the demo was quite a surprise to
us.

Who knows, maybe in a year CPUs might be good for graphics again.

The reason for this is because of the advances made by the RT group
inside Intel. Daniel Pohl, author of Quake III and IV Ray-Trace
demonstrations held a presentation that showed that Ray-Trace came
from 4FPS in 640x480 resolution on a 50 Xeon CPUs machine to over 90
FPS (frames per second) in 768x768 on a single machine with Yorkfield
processor running at sub-3GHz clockspeed.

http://www.theinquirer.net/images/ar.../Yorkfield.jpg


We all know that old Xeon was a Netbust, but this difference is just
insane.

The demo machine was based on a Gigabyte's X38 motherboard, two AMD
Radeon HD 2900XT cards in CrossFire mode, Corsair memory, and Intel
45nm quad-core processor, known to most people as Yorkfield. However,
graphics part was not used at all, so you could have GeForce 8400 or
Radeon HD 2400, this render would work as fast.

This does not stop here, since the upcoming "Skulltrail" system will
feature two Yorkfield processors with regular memory, making V8 rev2 a
very powerful and more affordable system. Judging from what we saw in
the morning, 8-core dual-Yorkfield system should be able to run the
fascinating demonstrations in 1280x720. This would be a first for HD
resolution with no major issues (or actually 1280x1280), but we will
have to wait until Q4 to see that one.

Bear in mind that this demonstration did not include some of the
special effects used in world of RT, because support for SSE4 is still
not implemented. Scaling is at nearly 100%, so with every extra core
you will get around 99% scaling boost, or a near-perfect code.

The lads in RT development plan to enable Intel's Ray Tracer available
for gaming developers, so that Ray-Trace can become a reality.
Timeframe for delivery is early 2009, and if you are great in logical
games, we will leave you to calculate with what Intel product is
planned to come in the same timeframe. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41858

Screenshots look different.

Maybe second demo was simpler than the first ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

"Skybuck Flying" writes:
Screenshots look different.

Maybe second demo was simpler than the first ?

Not to mention it's kind of absurd to think all that improvement was
from the change in processors. Intel seems to put a lot of work into
optimized ray-tracing algorithms (judging from all the papers I've seen
from them), and I'd expect this is just as much or more the result of
better algorithms than a better processor.

-Miles

--
Fast, small, soon; pick any 2.

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...
"Skybuck Flying" writes:
Screenshots look different.

Maybe second demo was simpler than the first ?

Not to mention it's kind of absurd to think all that improvement was
from the change in processors. Intel seems to put a lot of work into
optimized ray-tracing algorithms (judging from all the papers I've seen
from them), and I'd expect this is just as much or more the result of
better algorithms than a better processor.





years ago in the days of the amiga, my computer magazine of choice would
print nice raytraced pictures and then detail how many DAYS it had taken to
render that single frame.
real time 60fps raytracing would be rather nice - it could be the next step
in video game technology.



--
Gareth.

That fly... is your magic wand.
http://www.last.fm/user/dsbmusic/

"the dog from that film you saw"
writes:
years ago in the days of the amiga, my computer magazine of choice would
print nice raytraced pictures and then detail how many DAYS it had taken to
render that single frame.

Of course, as hardware/algorithms improve, so do people's
expectations... :-)

[I saw in an article somewhere that the average rendering time for the
recent "Transformers" movie was something like 38 hours per frame.
Those are really, really, high-quality frames though... :-]

-Miles

--
`The suburb is an obsolete and contradictory form of human settlement'

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...
"the dog from that film you saw"
writes:
years ago in the days of the amiga, my computer magazine of choice would
print nice raytraced pictures and then detail how many DAYS it had taken
to
render that single frame.

Of course, as hardware/algorithms improve, so do people's
expectations... :-)

[I saw in an article somewhere that the average rendering time for the
recent "Transformers" movie was something like 38 hours per frame.
Those are really, really, high-quality frames though... :-]

Gje and I still thought the movie looked like ****.

They don't even transform properly, their metal just melts and shifts into
place.

It didn't even have to typical cool transformer sound (Only optimus had
it a little bit)

Bye,
Skybuck.

"Skybuck Flying" writes:
[I saw in an article somewhere that the average rendering time for the
recent "Transformers" movie was something like 38 hours per frame.
Those are really, really, high-quality frames though... :-]

Gje and I still thought the movie looked like ****.

They don't even transform properly, their metal just melts and shifts into
place.

IIRC, the article I read said that the modelling of the transformations
was fairly accurate (e.g., the transformer models were composed of [many
thousands of] actual parts attached to each other via normal joints, and
nothing "collides" during transformation etc), but somebody made the
"artistic" decision to speed up the transformations and avoid the
extended sequences from the old shows (I dunno, I never watched them).

Anyway, from a rendering/modelling/simulation point of view the FX in
Transformers were pretty fscking amazing. The movie itself,
well.... truly the ultimate Michael Bay movie ... :-)

-Miles
--
80% of success is just showing up. --Woody Allen

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...


IIRC, the article I read said that the modelling of the transformations
was fairly accurate (e.g., the transformer models were composed of [many
thousands of] actual parts attached to each other via normal joints, and
nothing "collides" during transformation etc), but somebody made the
"artistic" decision to speed up the transformations and avoid the
extended sequences from the old shows (I dunno, I never watched them).

Anyway, from a rendering/modelling/simulation point of view the FX in
Transformers were pretty fscking amazing. The movie itself,
well.... truly the ultimate Michael Bay movie ... :-)



i thought the way the cgi robots were rendered was very impressive - in the
outdoor scenes they looked like genuine bits of shiny metal rather than cgi.



--
Gareth.

That fly... is your magic wand.
http://www.last.fm/user/dsbmusic/

"the dog from that film you saw" wrote
in message ...

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...


IIRC, the article I read said that the modelling of the transformations
was fairly accurate (e.g., the transformer models were composed of [many
thousands of] actual parts attached to each other via normal joints, and
nothing "collides" during transformation etc), but somebody made the
"artistic" decision to speed up the transformations and avoid the
extended sequences from the old shows (I dunno, I never watched them).

Anyway, from a rendering/modelling/simulation point of view the FX in
Transformers were pretty fscking amazing. The movie itself,
well.... truly the ultimate Michael Bay movie ... :-)



i thought the way the cgi robots were rendered was very impressive - in
the outdoor scenes they looked like genuine bits of shiny metal rather
than cgi.

I watched the movie on low resolution so I probably missed the sparkly
sparkly metal shiny thingy LOL

Bye,
Skybuck.

"Skybuck Flying" wrote in message
...
"the dog from that film you saw"
wrote in message ...

"Miles Bader" wrote in message
...


IIRC, the article I read said that the modelling of the transformations
was fairly accurate (e.g., the transformer models were composed of [many
thousands of] actual parts attached to each other via normal joints, and
nothing "collides" during transformation etc), but somebody made the
"artistic" decision to speed up the transformations and avoid the
extended sequences from the old shows (I dunno, I never watched them).

Anyway, from a rendering/modelling/simulation point of view the FX in
Transformers were pretty fscking amazing. The movie itself,
well.... truly the ultimate Michael Bay movie ... :-)



i thought the way the cgi robots were rendered was very impressive - in
the outdoor scenes they looked like genuine bits of shiny metal rather
than cgi.

I watched the movie on low resolution so I probably missed the sparkly
sparkly metal shiny thingy LOL


yeah.


ok, going into other aspects:

I saw the movie. just me noticing, these transformers don't look much like
the old cartoons...

so, in the old style, they were more or less solid-looking.
these ones have lots of elaborate parts and lacking outer casings.

is a difference...


oh yeah, and there was no 'Billy' per se.
this new one is, too old...
slightly dissapointed by the lack of slightly whiny middle-schooler.
(him existing in nearly every series, energon or minicons, or giant
planet-eating sphere/robot, ...).

so, we get a somewhat older, less whiny, replacement, aka, 'Sam'...

I also partly expected lameness and bad puns as well...

oh well...


so, decent movie?... yes.

as much similarity with the other shows/movies sharing the name?... IMO, not
really.
the 'style' is different somehow.


it is comprable the difference between 'Mazinger Z' and 'New Getter Robo'...

or, somewhat more dramatic, if 'Lazy Town' turned into 'Batman Begins'. one
may watch one for a different reason than the other...


or something...


Bye,
Skybuck.