Hardware T&L: Are we drifting away?

[Richteralan]

Are the majority of game developers going away from HTL and using new geometry shaders?

If there will be some changes from HTL to something new, how large in scale will graphic chip design will be affected?

 

[RejZoR]

T&L was "replaced" by Vertex and Pixel Shaders.

 

[Richteralan]

T&L was "replaced" by Vertex and Pixel Shaders.

When will we see complete HTL being obsolete?

 

[RejZoR]

Hard to say. DX10 maybe. Though you can't really talk about T&L as some completely stand alone thing.

 

[Richteralan]

Hard to say. DX10 maybe. Though you can't really talk about T&L as some completely stand alone thing.

This question actually arose when Intel released their new integrated graphic core that added Hardware T&L capabilities.

 

[Tim]

When will we see complete HTL being obsolete?

It already is neither Ati nor NVIDIA has dedicated T&L hardware any more, when games request T&L it is emulated via vertex shaders. I expect that it is the same with Intels new integrated part, althought T&L are suported it is emulated internal via the vertex shaders.

That does not mean T&L is not used in current games, many engines used in newer games is actually pretty old and are using legacy features like T&L (Civ4 is a rather new game that uses T&L).

 

[iwod]

It already is neither Ati nor NVIDIA has dedicated T&L hardware any more, when games request T&L it is emulated via vertex shaders. I expect that it is the same with Intels new integrated part, althought T&L are suported it is emulated internal via the vertex shaders.

That does not mean T&L is not used in current games, many engines used in newer games is actually pretty old and are using legacy features like T&L (Civ4 is a rather new game that uses T&L).

Now that makes more sense. Thx

 

[archie4oz]

I think you guys mean "fixed-function" T&L... Vertex shader *are* still "hardware T&L" (although the notion of "hardware" vs. "software" is badly misused quite a bit), they just provide you a procedural programming model for your vertex data as opposed parameter based model..

 

[mczak]

This question actually arose when Intel released their new integrated graphic core that added Hardware T&L capabilities.

Are you talking about i945? I was under the impression it was the same as that on i915 (gma 900), safe possibly for tweaks here and there and maybe higher clock speeds. i915 and older definitely have no hw t&l or vertex shader support in any way, shape or form (all emulated on cpu). I think I didn't really see any extensive review of the igp in i945 yet...

 

[Richteralan]

It already is neither Ati nor NVIDIA has dedicated T&L hardware any more, when games request T&L it is emulated via vertex shaders. I expect that it is the same with Intels new integrated part, althought T&L are suported it is emulated internal via the vertex shaders.

That does not mean T&L is not used in current games, many engines used in newer games is actually pretty old and are using legacy features like T&L (Civ4 is a rather new game that uses T&L).

Good read, thanks.:smile:

 

[Richteralan]

Are you talking about i945? I was under the impression it was the same as that on i915 (gma 900), safe possibly for tweaks here and there and maybe higher clock speeds. i915 and older definitely have no hw t&l or vertex shader support in any way, shape or form (all emulated on cpu). I think I didn't really see any extensive review of the igp in i945 yet...

Yes. According to Intel, the new i945 will have Hardware T&L unit(s) built-in.
I'm just curious about it's structure and possible performances.

 

[darkblu]

Yes. According to Intel, the new i945 will have Hardware T&L unit(s) built-in.
I'm just curious about it's structure and possible performances.

i don't know what sources you've seen but gma950 has just as much vertex shaders as gma900. zilch. zero. nada. cpu emulated from top to bottom. it has improved fillrate, though (due to higher clock and faster host memory interfaces).

 

[KimB]

Are the majority of game developers going away from HTL and using new geometry shaders?

If there will be some changes from HTL to something new, how large in scale will graphic chip design will be affected?

Just as a comment on the original question:

Absolutely not. Vertex shaders are merely a generalization of hardware T&L. It's still hardware transform and lighting, we can just do more with it now. Hardware vertex processing is becoming more prominent than ever.

So though it may be true that the old fixed-function way of programming for hardware vertex processing is falling by the wayside, this is just a programming detail. The hardware's still doing the transformation and lighting when vertex shaders are used.

 

[chavvdarrr]

Yes. According to Intel, the new i945 will have Hardware T&L unit(s) built-in.
I'm just curious about it's structure and possible performances.

i945 is "old" chip, you probably mean i965 , the one with SM3.0 support, mentioned in another thread here?

 

[Mintmaster]

Just to give Chalnoth's post some weight, recall that the original Radeon had plain old T&L, whereas the Radeon 8500 had vertex shaders. Even so, there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two architecturally (besides the latter having twice the vertex power). Only a few modifications were needed.

Vertex shading is here to stay unless you get a CPU maker attacking the problem (e.g. Cell, and even then it's unlikely the vertex shader units on a GPU have less performance per mm^2 of silicon). I remember a dev saying the vertex shader 1.1 instruction set is what SSE should have been.

 

[Fox5]

Are you talking about i945? I was under the impression it was the same as that on i915 (gma 900), safe possibly for tweaks here and there and maybe higher clock speeds. i915 and older definitely have no hw t&l or vertex shader support in any way, shape or form (all emulated on cpu). I think I didn't really see any extensive review of the igp in i945 yet...

GMA900 does have hardware t&l, but only for pixel shaders. (and it's fairly crappy) They offload the vertex shaders to the cpu, with very miserable results.

BTW, I believe the GMA950 is nothing more than a clock bumped GMA900.

 

[KimB]

GMA900 does have hardware t&l, but only for pixel shaders.

Er, that's an oxymoron.

 

[Fox5]

Er, that's an oxymoron.

Well, I mean in the sense it has hardware that can perform those functions, it isn't a cpu emulation like the old integrated graphics used, the beta voodoo drivers, or the powervr cards.

 

[KimB]

Well, I mean in the sense it has hardware that can perform those functions, it isn't a cpu emulation like the old integrated graphics used, the beta voodoo drivers, or the powervr cards.

Sure, it can perform pixel shader functions, not transform and (vertex) lighting functions.