Physics processing unit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:29, 4 August 2021

Revision as of 15:10, 18 November 2021

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==PPU vs. GPUs==

The drive toward [[GPGPU]] has made GPUs more suitable for the job of a PPU; DX10 added integer data types, unified shader architecture, and a geometry shader stage which allows a broader range of algorithms to be implemented; Modern GPUs support [[compute shadersshader]]s, which run across an indexed space and don't require any graphical resources, just general purpose data buffers. NVidia [[CUDA]] provides a little more in the way of inter-thread communication and [[Scratchpad memory|scratchpad-style workspace]] associated with the threads.

Nonetheless GPUs are built around a larger number of longer latency, slower threads, and designed around texture and framebuffer data paths, and poor branching performance; this distinguishes them from PPUs and [[Cell (microprocessor)|Cell]] as being less well optimized for taking over game world simulation tasks.