Re: Could this ever work? Using another entire PC to do the job of graphics/video card on a 'host' pc....
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:12:06 -0500
DAN wrote:
This may sound like complete rubbish - and it probably is. I'm
certainly NO expert! It's just a random thought I had.....
The PC - three of it's main elements are: processor (CPU), memory and
chipset, right?
The graphics/video card - three of it's main elements are: processor
(GPU), memory and chipset, again.... (right?)
It seems to me that a pc and video card seem to be made up of similar
components, but their relative speeds seem to be very different
presently.
E.G.
My Current Athlon x2 has two cores running at 2000 Mhz.
An Nvidia 8800GTX video card, for example, only seems to have a single
core running at 575 Mhz (is that right?)
If we have the technology to have a main processor core running well
in excess of 3000 Mhz, why is it we can't do the same for a GPU in a
video card? (I understand, however, a lot of the video card speed has
more to do with memory clock).
Given the fact some video cards cost the earth, with fairly modest to
low core/memory speeds COMPARED to even a very low end mobo/cpu/ram
combo (that's even if they CAN be compared - I guess that's what I'm
kinda asking..) ........... What if we could use an entire PC (say,
one we didn't use anymore, but had higher cpu clock and more RAM than
the current video cards) to connect in some way to our MAIN pc, to
solely do the job of a video card??? It would have far faster
processing speeds and as much ram as we could throw at it.
I guess the interface between the two pc's would be a problem
though....?? How would THAT work??
Someone tell me this is complete rubbish (as I'm sure it is!) but
more importantly, I'm interested WHY! :)
Cheers,
Dan
Differences:
1) CPU makers own their own fab facilities. Intel is about to
ship 45nm, and has decent volume at 65nm. AMD has had 65nm
for a while, and their best clocks come from 90nm parts.
GPU makers (Nvidia and ATI) are fabless companies, that don't
fork out $2B every time the geometry shrinks. They buy fab
capacity at places like TSMC or IBM. They are at the mercy of what
sized chip will yield well, in whatever the best process is
at TSMC or IBM.
Now, the very latest ATI parts, (3850/3870) are supposed to
be at 55nm, so from that point of view, they've finally caught
up. But there is still a lot of product being manufactured, in
larger geometry processes.
A company that owns its own fabs, can do a lot more custom
design work, than a company that doesn't own a fab.
2) One limiting factor for current technology, is leakage current.
Intel seems to have done a good job of curing their problems
(compare Prescott to Conroe). AMD is pushing their stuff pretty
hard, and the top bin parts have a TDP of 125W.
TSMC will be dealing with the very same leakage problems as
everyone else, but their rate of progress will be different.
You can only put as much circuitry, and use as much clock speed,
as thermal limits and on-die electrical noise limits will
allow. The two kinds of chip designs are entirely different.
The GPU has a very large memory interface, for example, and
that doesn't help the noise issue.
3) The architectures are entirely different.
The GPU has some kind of central dispatcher, feeding a large
number (hundreds) of functional units.
The multi-core CPUs have a small number of general purpose
units.
The GPU has way more GFLOPs to offer, if a problem can be
fitted to the resources it provides.
And that is the reason, that it is alright to be at 575MHz.
575MHz times 320 function units, beats 3000MHz times 4 functional units.
As long as the problem being solved, is massively parallel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpgpu
As an example, I tried a search on "GPGPU speedup", and stopped
with the first thread I found. GPGPU stands for "general purpose
graphics processor unit", and libraries exist today that allow
applications programmers, to use the GPU to do math.
GPGPU definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpgpu
GPGPU speedup factors achieved
http://www.gpgpu.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=110
You can expect great things in the future, as application
programmers become more familiar with GPGPU programming.
I can imagine someone getting a 30x speedup transcoding a
movie, if the job is done on the GPU.
Even if it "only" runs at 575MHz :-)
If a problem doesn't have parallel elements to it,
neither a multi-core processor, nor a GPU, will make
it go faster. Don't expect to see Microsoft Office
benefit from anything other than pure clock speed.
But for a lot of multimedia applications (video editing
or Photoshop), these are interesting times.
Paul
.
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