Physics processing unit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:51, 4 August 2017

Revision as of 23:52, 4 August 2017

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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 shaders, 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 the Cell as being less well optimized for taking over game world simulation tasks.

The [[Sieve C++ Parallel Programming System|Codeplay Sieve compiler]] supports the PPU, indicating that the Ageia physX chip would be suitable for GPGPU type tasks. However Ageia seem unlikely to pursue this market.