What I don't get about this simulation approach to improve their design is that shouldn't this be AMD's job during the design stages of their APUs and GPUs? It's as if MS would be the "only" one who has an idea how games use their hardware in the first place to localise critical areas and improve on them.
AMD and Microsoft have two completely different goals with some overlap for what they require from a GPU.
AMD is in competition with NVidia not only for the consumer market but for the professional market. As such they have to attempt to innovate WRT to features as much as possible or risk losing significant ground to their competition.
Microsoft on the other hand, with Project Scorpio, was focused entirely on increasing the performance of current methods of rendering games on consoles.
That means that while profiling of current generation games is helpful in increasing design parameters for a GPU to accelerate how developers are currently using GPUs, it doesn't address potential future changes to how games might be rendered. OTOH, designing with the future in mind is risky. It could mean that your GPU ends up being less competitive than a GPU focused on current graphics rendering in games. For example, in the PC space AMD GPUs (GCN in particular) have generally aged quite gracefully as they get older, while NVidia GPUs sometimes don't age as well. But at the same time, those NVidia GPUs had a performance advantage at the time when they were most relevant.
So, when it comes down to it. Yes it's helpful to profile current generation games extensively to make a GPU more efficient at rendering those games and presumably other games in the near future of that generation. No, it's not necessarily something you want to focus on if you are designing GPU technology.
So, looking at something like double rate FP16. It definitely can and will have advantages in the future once engines are designed for it.. It also has virtually no advantages "now" and won't for any engines that don't take advantage of it in the next few years.
So if we look at Project Scorpio, it'll have massive benefit with regards to all games currently releasing and releasing in the next few years. The addition of dual rate FP16 would have virtually no benefit to current games, and little to no benefit to most games coming in the near future with the possibility of more widespread benefit after maybe 2-3 (?) years once it's incorporated into general use engines (UE, Unity, etc.) and once development of games using those modified engines enter the market.
Had AMD focused too much on profiling current generation game rendering techniques they may have decided not to include dual rate FP16 and/or decided that it was appropriate for the professional market but of little to no use in the consumer gaming market much like NVidia.
Regards,
SB
As for AMD, probably, because objectively that's the best comparison to make - so that as many things as possible are equal.
I wonder if dual-format discs like this would work.
