ATI CTO on DX10

[Geo]

Bob Drebin, which I blush to admit this is the first time I've heard his name (or at least the first time I heard it and it stuck). Hopefully it won't be the last time he comes out to talk.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1985159,00.asp

As far as differences between DirectX 9 games and DirectX 10 games, I suspect that the first DirectX 10 titles will use DirectX 10 to overcome traditional limitations they've faced with DirectX 9. For instance, the geometry shader's stream out capability will enable games to accelerate game math such as physics on the GPU.

I have a suspicion this would explain Orton's "9-12 months" prediction on Physics moving significant quantities of ATI product . . .

And, just because SOME people (not to mention any names, but YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) only care about new product speculation . . .

ATI is not tying the launch of our DirectX 10 hardware to the launch of Vista. While DirectX 10 may only be exposed under Vista, ATI's DirectX 10 capable graphics cards are designed to deliver strong performance in DirectX 9 games running on Windows XP as well.

And if Bob D. is one of our lurkers. . . you come on out and play more often, y'hear?

 

[Tim Murray]

Drebin: Some GP-GPU applications can benefit from low-level hardware access to the GPU, while others benefit from the harness of DirectX or OpenGL. Along with standard APIs for its GPUs, ATI has been working to allow programmers to get "close to the metal" to enable that low-level hardware access.

Good to see it still exists. Was worried about the six months or so without a peep about their low-level GPU API.

 

[Inane_Dork]

A low-level, vendor-specific API would be interesting for experimental work, but who would use it in a retail game? It would be more constricting than using OGL extensions, I would think.

 

[Tim Murray]

A low-level, vendor-specific API would be interesting for experimental work, but who would use it in a retail game? It would be more constricting than using OGL extensions, I would think.

It's not for games at all It's for GPGPU applications.

 

[Demirug]

It's not for games at all It's for GPGPU applications.

Not only. It can be used for Physik for games too.

 

[DudeMiester]

It's not for games at all It's for GPGPU applications.

Someone's bound to try though.

 

[Inane_Dork]

It's not for games at all It's for GPGPU applications.

Well, that makes more sense about the audience, but I guess I don't see it being that helpful even there. And when I say "helpful," I mean for the good of the company.

 

[Tim Murray]

Well, that makes more sense about the audience, but I guess I don't see it being that helpful even there. And when I say "helpful," I mean for the good of the company.

Scientific computing. If you can get a card for $600 that quadruples your performance with certain algorithms, you're going to sell a lot of cards that way to universities and the like.