ATI - PS3 is Unrefined

[Dave Baumann]

Yes, one of the reasons why a unified architecture works. As far as the ALU's are concerned theres not really any difference between a pixel and vertex as it can perform exactly the same operations on either, all that really matters is whats going on with it prior and post the ALU stage.

 

[bobthebub]

Yes, one of the reasons why a unified architecture works. As far as the ALU's are concerned theres not really any difference between a pixel and vertex as it can perform exactly the same operations on either, all that really matters is whats going on with it prior and post the ALU stage.

I'm reluctant to jump in here because most of this is beyond me, but reading this reminds me of the NVIDIA statements about not going unified until it makes sense, presumably even given the above there are arguments to keep PS and VS separate, Pixel shaders seem to be much more advanced from the perspective that they require advanced programmability and as such a unified shader doing Vertex work seems to be wasting transistors If the Vertex shaders jump to a new Gen (DX10) and utilise more advanced (programmable) geometry would it suddenly make more sense to go unified?

 

[Dave Baumann]

VS and PS 3.0 are already fairly close in functionality, but not entirely so - Xenos just aligns the functionality and the XBOX 360 API exposes that. NVIDIA's primary argument against unification was cited as differences in PS needing to be more latency tolerent because of the increased use of texturing, however Xenos's structure shifts texturing more or less entirely away from the ALU array.

 

[Dr. Nick]

So now that NVIDIA has an idea about how ATI did it, do you think they will have their own USA GPU soon?