Twilight of the GPU

[Necuno]

2006-7: CPU's become so fast and powerful that 3D hardware will be only marginally beneficial for rendering, relative to the limits of the human visual system, therefore 3D chips will likely be deemed a waste of silicon (and more expensive bus plumbing), so the world will transition back to software-driven rendering. And, at this point, there will be a new renaissance in non-traditional architectures such as voxel rendering and REYES-style microfacets, enabled by the generality of CPU's driving the rendering process. If this is a case, then the 3D hardware revolution sparked by 3dfx in 1997 will prove to only be a 10-year hiatus from the natural evolution of CPU-driven rendering.

full read @ http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gpu-sweeney-interview.ars

 

[The_Unbeliever]

I don't think the GPU will die out completely - the Eee PC (and others) might still require one...

 

[general_koffi]

I can't say I'd be sorry.

Especially about this part:

Goodbye, graphics APIs

That would likely spell the end of Microsoft's PC gaming monopoly.

 

[Turiko]

It can be done, even with relatively low-end CPU's if the bloat present in modern-day software is to be reduced.

There will still need to be a graphics controller.

1) You will need something to generate the timings
2) The frame buffer, is a very specialised and challenging piece of hardware inside the GPU. It is a dual-port memory with very fast access times- faster than the latest DDR memory.

 

[scotty777]

Well, maybe the graphics cards will become obsolete, but i still think that their will be a level where the gpu is still present, a good example is AMD's soon to be Fusion processor which encompass both the CPU and GPU on one chip...

The funny thing is that the GPU(clock for clock, and the 4850 is supposed to be 4 times faster then the fastest intel quad core) is faster in terms of sheer computing power then and consumer CPU.

But honestly, i think that graphics cards my over take gpu's as if you look now, Nvidia's CUDA and Physics are something that Intel struggle to complete.

But If you look at ray-tracing, which is the next big thing for games, the current gpu's can do it in real time (at moderate res) while Intel are spending millions of $ on it, and still can't get it to run off CPU tech....

 

[Necuno]

Goodbye, graphics APIs

this will be both good and bad;

good, engines will become more popular again as it will be harder to write your own proper engine in raw c++.

bad, there will be more spews of badly optimized graphic engines out there on the market - not like there are now already of those in place

the gpu as a card may disappear, but i will venture that some of its functions will be integrated into the cpu - birth of the hibred processor gpu+cpu

...allmost brings back memories of the good olde FPU and its absorption