Intel’s process of increasing the number of cores in its processors is not just coming but promises a better integration of the games in the processors into the multi-core systems. It’s not new that games can hardly take advantage of the multi-core processors, but Intel wants to change that.
Breaking the bottleneck for games
Today, multi-core processors help manage programs that require several parallel execution lines, such as editing programs, as well as quickly support multitasking of our computers. Games expect little from the processor cores as the calculations have to be sequential and cannot be parallelized.
That becomes the main bottleneck of the games, the rendering. The data has to be calculated sequentially and then executed in a particular order.
This conference comes from Intel and different video game studios at the GDC 2018. As for the scalability of the CPUs, they showed in a graph as from the eight cores the improvements are too small. And if we look at the increase, we are currently experiencing: from the four cores to the six there is an improvement of almost a point, while from the six to the eight is less than half a point.
Solving the rendering issues
To be able to parallelize the code of a game. So, the engine tasks should be divided into different processes: rendering, game logic, and simulation. And a robust enough work scheduler should be built so that the result is not affected.
As for the user experience, it is intended to enhance this by scaling the performance of the kernels. As well as the effects preventing them from affecting the game.
Hyper-Threading affects performance
Developers have also talked about how Hyper-Threading affects performance. So, when we split a kernel in two we split its power and resources in two, like the L1 cache. If you want to access two processes in the same cache. Also, this can lead to an increase in access time and therefore to the loss of processor power. If the division is made less literal, leaving each thread for different tasks, performance can be improved rather than lost.
The creators of Total War: Warhammer 2 and Conqueror’s Blade participated in this conference. In which they told us the objectives of the collaboration with Intel in the project to improve the support of games with multi-core. Among the targets, we find ourselves with the ability to support more than a thousand players with different AI. And different states, dynamic battlefields that are easy to scale. The project promises, the goal is set at about two and a half months, so we may soon see the news.
Via> ComputerBase
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