[spectator] Laurent Humblet

posts : 222 administrator
 
| I think that, with the xbox 360 developement and the D3 engine port they have done for it so far, idsoftware and/or Raven start to have a bit more experience with multi-CPU platform (the xbox 360 has a triple-core CPU designed by IBM).
The future in terms of gaming is going to multi-core processors as the very infrastructure of both xbox and ps3 are multi-core. The actual challenge for developers relies on the need to change the way they think when they program for multi-core platform.
But youre right and wrong about HT Ois. At the moment, HT and multicore processors arent used to their best (if at all) because of the very reason you just mentionned: that until now, software was and is still written for single hardware thread in mind. With the thirst for more CPU power to render amazing graphics, the only way to provide new-gen graphics is to go by multi-core programming. So from now on multi-core developement is rising and will go high, very high.
About the patch, this is a beta patch and I believe that its made only for bug reports on the new feature (r_useSMP). The developers studios probably have enough os/hardware variations to debug the basics but releasing it as a beta patch will allow them to hit a wider range of machines to test.
The patch 1.1 will have the SMP feature fully debugged as well as most of the cvars and console commands forgotten in the release of Q4.
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