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Posted

I dunno, but Gabe and his band of Valvers are almost finished re-building Source to use a hybrid multithreading (a mix of both coarse threadings

OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS

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OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT

Posted

From what I've read, you stand to get maybe 25% or so better performance with today's software, which usually isn't written with multi-threading code. You do get better performance while running several applications, each being a separate thread, but until software is written to support multi-threading within an application, you won't get much for your money. When multiple threads are present, the operating system can assign them to different processors in a multi-processor environment, thus improving overall performance.

 

It isn't too hard to implement. Music can run in a thread, the sound effects mixer can run in a thread, server and client code can be separate threads, networking can be a thread, input device handling can be a thread, file system management can be a thread, and so on. It requires more advanced programming, and probably compilers, but it'll become standard now that multi-processor systems are becoming more and more popular. Any developer who doesn't code for multi-threading will be yesterday's news.

 

Valve is setting a good example that other game developers would be wise to follow. The Source engine is already well-written and nicely optimized, yet the creators are going the extra mile to support modern hardware. If all goes well in 2007, I'll be playing HL2:Episode 2 on a quad-core AMD system.

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Because all those others were dirty bio fanbois and not obzidian fanbois.

Edited by kirottu

This post is not to be enjoyed, discussed, or referenced on company time.

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