Multi threaded Open GL

[BFG]

edit: Tuncer explains it a little more in laymans speak!:

Mac gaming is about to get a huge boost in performance thanks to a new multi-threaded OpenGL. According to some people I've talked to, multi-threaded OpenGL games will see huge gains in performance. With multi-threaded OpenGL, the game, for example, can run off one core/CPU, while OpenGL can work on the second core/processor for its processing. So they work in concurrent fashion instead of co-habitating one CPU. The amount of benefit multi-threaded OpenGL games will have depends on how complex a scene in a game is. So, for example, in a very complex scene with lots of polygons, you'll see big gains in frame rates. One person told me they saw a very popular MMORPG DOUBLE in frame rates in one particular scene because of multi-threaded OpenGL. We're talking from 60 frames to 130 frames just in that one scene alone.

Now for the good news and some bad news. According to my sources, multi-threaded OpenGL is currently only available on the new Mac Pro systems Apple began shipping last week. But if all goes as planned, multi-threaded OpenGL will make its way into 10.4.8 (we think). If you have an Intel Mac (such as an Intel iMac or Mac Book Pro), then you will see the benefits of multi-threaded OpenGL. It is still unclear, however, whether Intel's GMA 950 graphics processor or old ATI/NVIDIA hardware found on older machines will get support for multi-threaded OpenGL.

But wait, there's a bit of a problem that we haven't talked about. There were some rumors last week that Apple might be holding multi-thread OpenGL for Leopard. Details are fuzzy on whether multi-thread OpenGL will make it into Mac OS X 10.4.8 Intel and/or Mac OS X 10.4.8 PowerPC.

This rumors hasn't sat well with some developers. In fact, one UK based developer has been holding off on releasing their products in anticipation of multi-thread OpenGL. If for some reason Apple decides to hold off on it until Leopard, that developer would have waited all these months for nothing.

One way or another, multi-thread OpenGL will make it to the Mac. It could be sooner rather than later but it's a distinct possibility that Apple will hold off on it until Leopard ships. In the meantime, though, the Mac Pro is the only Mac that currently has it.

One last thing to keep in mind...developers must patch to activate and take advantage of multi-threaded OpenGL.

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/17/5024


For those who are interested, Apple announced that they are using the LLVM
optimizer and JIT within their Mac OS 10.5 'Leopard' OpenGL stack (which
was distributed in beta form to WWDC attendees).

LLVM is used in two different ways, at runtime:

1. Runtime code specialization within the fixed-function vertex-processing
    pipeline.  Basically, the OpenGL pipeline has many parameters (is fog
    enabled? do vertices have texture info? etc) which rarely change:
    executing the fully branchy code swamps the branch predictors and
    performs poorly.  To solve this, the code is precompiled to LLVM .bc
    form, from which specializations of the code are made, optimized,
    and JIT compiled as they are needed at runtime.

2. OpenGL vertex shaders are small programs written using a family of
    programming langauges with highly domain-specific features (e.g. dot
    product, texture lookup, etc).  At runtime, the OpenGL stack translates
    vertex programs into LLVM form, runs LLVM optimizer passes and then JIT
    compiles the code.

In non excessive geek language - in future optermised games we could be seeing double the frame rate... sounds nice dosn't it!

[BTs_Mysterio]

Yea, except no games of significance to us will be updated or patched (GhR, RvS, AA). 

[BFG]

bugger i wrote a big responce but didn't post it lol.

in short, macsoft just patched halo to UB. Asypr are brining several of their most popular games to UB. Patching of released games is not unheard off. the question is whether it will be a 10.4 PPC feature or just a Intel 10.5 feature.

Also with the emergence of solutions like Cider the cost and difficulty of porting seems to be about to dramatically change. Thanks to Ageia middleware costs are also not exorbitant and perhaps in the future folks like the AA Devs and those who pay their fees might decide that actually it isn't a lot of work to provide mac versions. - If not then Cider etc provide realistic ways for the likes of Rycan Gorden to provide mac versions. - and MultiThreaded OpenGL provide more tools to make these games run at 'windows native' or dare i say it faster speeds.

[BTs_Mysterio]

I bet someone in the Gr community could port the 43MB of 2.5-->2.7 without help. If only we could figure out who that is..... hmmm.

[BFG]

I wish somone had the money to Pay Ryan Gordon...

and i wish the AA devs would let him/help him to do it.

[BTs_Mysterio]

... you know how little money the American army has BFG; don't be so silly. 

[BFG]

yeah sorry, i forgot they spent it sending bombs to israel so they could kill lebanese civilians!

oops, almost went political Indeed - but i guess mac guys have more common sense than to join the army

oh crap i give up. yep myst its daft. but maybe if theres a chance of making money from it they might think twice (if and if the number of players on macs increases)

[BTs_Mysterio]

They could make money selling the damn thing if it's that hard. I mean this game is far better than most games I've paid for (except RS).

[BFG]

A wee bit more info from the recently leaked screenshots etc:

"Leopard also provides a dramatic increase in OpenGL performance by offloading CPU-based processing onto another thread which can then run on a separate CPU core feeding the GPU. This can increase, or in some cases, even double the performance of OpenGL-based applications."

= tasty OpenGL goodness!