[CarstenS]

Originally Posted by Gipsel

That's understandable as there is none.
"SIMT" (a really ridiculous term in my opinion) is just a stupid way to describe the mapping of a problem formulated in an implicitly parallel way onto an SIMD architecture with lane masking support.

You have to admit though, that SIMT is a bit more catchy than "tmoapfiaipwoaSawlms" [my bold above].

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

Same as that "Bindless Texture" that was anounced with Keplar, we just didn't reference it because we have PRT.

In retrospect, this wasn't a great choice IMHO, as one is not necessarily and immediately obviously a superset of the other, and the bindless thing is pretty damn useful.

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by CarstenS

You have to admit though, that SIMT is a bit more catchy than "tmoapfiaipwoaSawlms" [my bold above].

We can't really make a full GCN v Kepler comparison until nVidia rolls out its Tesla parts. GK104 is 40% bigger than Pitcairn and 40% faster so that's a wash. 40% with only a 25% bandwidth advantage too.

Not really sure what defines architectural "elegance" anyway. Doing more with less? Prettier slides?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

They read the resource constants and cache them, allowing the GPU to support any number textures per shader. Same as that "Bindless Texture" that was anounced with Keplar, we just didn't reference it because we have PRT.

]
I'm afraid I lost you at the PRT part.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

]
I'm afraid I lost you at the PRT part.

I think Dave means that you can achieve a pretty similar effect on hw having PRT...think instead of having >128 bind points, thus having to rely on the bindless aspect, you just make a fat, partially resident thingie and index into that (at least that's something that took about 30 seconds to cook up - probably wrong too!). You get the benefits of the CPU savings (no messing up with setting and unsetting resources, which isn't cheap), and some hardware help. As I said, if that's the idea, it's not a complete superset or a seamless replacement for the bindless facilities, so the fact that they can do it yet chose against adevertising it was counterproductive from where I'm standing.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

]
I'm afraid I lost you at the PRT part.

I take it Partially Resident Textures make bindless ones possible too.

[Dave Baumann]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

]
I'm afraid I lost you at the PRT part.

Originally Posted by AlexV

In retrospect, this wasn't a great choice IMHO, as one is not necessarily and immediately obviously a superset of the other, and the bindless thing is pretty damn useful.

Sure, mention it to the people that are going to get the most benefit (i.e developers), but at "Tech Day" you are apealing to the end users as much as press. If I have a few features that are interesting but outside of the DX model at the moment I'll spend time talking about the one that is more likely to resonate with the users ("Oooo, hardware accellerated MegaTextures").

[Davros]

so bindless textures its just a fancy name for use as many textures as you want ?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Davros

so bindless textures its just a fancy name for use as many textures as you want ?

Not only, it also can improve performance in the CPU.

[Mat3]

In the 7970 block diagram, the Ultra-Thread Dispatch Processor, which had been around from the X1800 to the 6970, is missing. I know each GCN unit has a scheduler, but that's at a different level I think.

So what happened to the thread dispatcher? Is it still there but they just didn't show in the block diagram, or they don't need it anymore? If so, how is work being dispatched to all the GCN units? Is it the ACE units?

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

Sure, mention it to the people that are going to get the most benefit (i.e developers), but at "Tech Day" you are apealing to the end users as much as press. If I have a few features that are interesting but outside of the DX model at the moment I'll spend time talking about the one that is more likely to resonate with the users ("Oooo, hardware accellerated MegaTextures").

That's over-specialisation IMO. What you probably want is "Oooo, shiny!!", and saying that you support infinite anything, in this case textures, gets it. I doubt that the vast majority of users tick upon reading MegaTexture. Maybe it's just me. Also, NV seems to have done quite well in having users drool over bindless. It gave them fuel to present something hyper novel, instead of something that ATI also does. That's not to be scoffed at, is it?