I was going to make a thread to ask this question but I'll ask it here instead.
for DX11 and the hardware that supports it (next-next gen GPU architectures) is a Programmable Primitive Processor still something that's desirable? or does the Geometry Shader do the things a PPP would've done?
I recall a few years ago, here, on this very board and elsewhere that a built-in / on-chip (or off-chip) Programmable Primitive Processor was something that was very much wanted for upcoming GPUs / graphics cards, much like T&L was desired in the late 1990s before NV10 came out.
also, if the Geometry Shader does not fill the role of a PPP, does ATI's programmable tesselation unit in R600 (and Xenos) fill that role? IIRC, ATI's tesselation unit is not required by DX10 and Nvidia doesn't have one in G80. even if ATI's tesselation is good and even if it filled the role of a PPP, it won't get much support in games since it's not in the DX10 spec.
I haven't heard any talk on PPP lately so I thought I'd bring it up again.