http://www.redgamingtech.com/ice-team-playstation-4-performance-boost-thanks-to-gpgpu-rendering/
Mark Cerny (the lead architect of the PS4) had said all along during several interviews the PS4′s GPGPU (compute) capacity would be the key to the consoles performance and this only further enforces his point and philosophy.
For those who’re unfamiliar with the PS4′s basic GPU architecture, it features 18 compute units, housing 64 shaders (ALU) each. This provides a grand total of 1152 processors capable of being used in a variety of different ways. The PS4′s GPU was expanded similar to AMD’s own Volcanic island desktop / desktop GPU line up by beefing up the ACE (Asynchronous Compute Engines) to eight from the previous two.
The Asynchronous Compute Engines queue and control the GPU’s task scheduling, effectively ensuring that compute data is being synced up to the current version in memory. Another important task they perform is the scheduling of when a task is performed so that it doesn’t interfere or drain away processing power from graphical tasks. For more information please checkout our article here. Another good source of info is AMD’s own official whitepaper (but they don’t cover the PS4 changes).
In addition to the increased number of ACE engines, they can queue more instructions (also raised from two to eight) meaning there’s a huge increase in the GPGPU control structure and performance inside the PS4. Shortly put, it can store more compute commands and has a larger number of units to tell compute (or graphic commands) how to run over the shaders. Don’t forget the PS4 also has more GPU performance than the X1 too.
Rounding all of this off is the PS4′s advanced HUMA memory architecture and of course the volatile bit compute structure which allows selective lines of code in the level 2 cache of the GPU to be flushed rather than needing to perform an entire Level 2 flush that would otherwise be necessary.
So, with ICE Team improving the SDK to allow games developers better libraries and an easier time of getting up and running we should see an advancement of GPU Rendering. GPU rendering is a fairly large field and could many a plethora of different tasks. Everything from Ray Tracing to having the GPU calculate certain types of physics or to help in AI and overall production of a scene in the game.
Mark Cerny (the lead architect of the PS4) had said all along during several interviews the PS4′s GPGPU (compute) capacity would be the key to the consoles performance and this only further enforces his point and philosophy.
For those who’re unfamiliar with the PS4′s basic GPU architecture, it features 18 compute units, housing 64 shaders (ALU) each. This provides a grand total of 1152 processors capable of being used in a variety of different ways. The PS4′s GPU was expanded similar to AMD’s own Volcanic island desktop / desktop GPU line up by beefing up the ACE (Asynchronous Compute Engines) to eight from the previous two.
The Asynchronous Compute Engines queue and control the GPU’s task scheduling, effectively ensuring that compute data is being synced up to the current version in memory. Another important task they perform is the scheduling of when a task is performed so that it doesn’t interfere or drain away processing power from graphical tasks. For more information please checkout our article here. Another good source of info is AMD’s own official whitepaper (but they don’t cover the PS4 changes).
In addition to the increased number of ACE engines, they can queue more instructions (also raised from two to eight) meaning there’s a huge increase in the GPGPU control structure and performance inside the PS4. Shortly put, it can store more compute commands and has a larger number of units to tell compute (or graphic commands) how to run over the shaders. Don’t forget the PS4 also has more GPU performance than the X1 too.
Rounding all of this off is the PS4′s advanced HUMA memory architecture and of course the volatile bit compute structure which allows selective lines of code in the level 2 cache of the GPU to be flushed rather than needing to perform an entire Level 2 flush that would otherwise be necessary.
So, with ICE Team improving the SDK to allow games developers better libraries and an easier time of getting up and running we should see an advancement of GPU Rendering. GPU rendering is a fairly large field and could many a plethora of different tasks. Everything from Ray Tracing to having the GPU calculate certain types of physics or to help in AI and overall production of a scene in the game.
