[ODE] re: hw

[Steve Dekorte]

On Sunday, May 11, 2003, at 06:38 PM, Billy Zelsnack wrote:
> I doubt it will happen. Games are the only thing that drives these 
> types of
> markets. 1Ghz of cpu power dedicated to physics is plenty of power for 
> most
> anything you would want to do in a game for today. By the time game
> developers figure out how to use that up, there will be 3Ghz of cpu 
> laying
> around idling.

Perhaps. Though "anything you would want to do in a game for today" 
seems to be largely a function of what today's hw is capable of. For 
example, 3d games were relatively rare before modern graphics cards. 
Today it seems most make heavy use of 3d. I can see the same being true 
of dynamics. (I can even see next generation desktops involving 
dynamics and rendering 3d widgets as real 3d objects instead of 
pre-rendered images)

General purpose processors obviously aren't capable of competing with 
custom logic for performance. And if it's a commodity function we there 
are a number of examples were they also can't compete for 
performance/price.

Cheers,
Steve
"Statically typed languages are like American sports cars.
They go fast, but only in a straight line"