Dual Core Support?

[Mezasa]

Are there any plans for true dual core support in PS?  Will that much power ever be needed anyway?  The game works fine as is, I\'m just wondering ?(

[ramlambmoo]

Well it would have to be implemented in Crystal Space, as thats what takes up most of the processing time, as is my limited understanding.
Then again, perhaps if they implemented it so one core ran the graphics engine and the other ran everything else, they wouldnt need to change crystal space.  But I think dual core support for PS wouldnt be that high on the list of priorities, I think the community would rather other features first, unless it is very simple and wouldnt take much time to add.

[white_slayer]

not meaning to sound like an idot here but whats dual core lol

[Vjorin]

Modern technology allows for computers to run on multiple processors.  So like, say you had a computer, you could build it with a motherboard running duel, or even quad processors.

The problem with this, is generally software isn\'t designed to send one set of operations to one processor, and another set of operations to another processor, hence limiting the use of multiple processors.  You have to build the program to do this.

I\'m not sure how the programming works in this case, but if CrystalSpace or PlaneShift did this, they would have to restructure the core code, which would be, my guess, very time consuming.

[Bereror]

I think there are no changes needed to the Planeshift or CrystalSpace code. Planeshift is already a multi-threaded application and the operating system can run these threads on different CPUs. It is up to the operating system to support more than one CPU or more than one core, which all the modern operating systems should be doing already.

[Xordan]

Yes, I believe that there\'s already some support for taking advantage of multi-processor/core & hyperthreading somewhere. I\'m not sure what code can be tweaked for further improvement though. The tweaks don\'t enable the use of multi-cores, but enable to code to do things a bit quicker. A question best asked to a CS dev no doubt.

[Mezasa]

I don\'t mean dual proc, I mean dual core.  I have one processor with 2 cores on it (an Athlon X2), and I was just wondering about the support.  While PS doesn\'t really even need it IMO (it isn\'t a very intensive program), it works much better whenever it\'s implemented into the software, because Windows/Linux can\'t make it fully efficient.  Hell, many people have to turn off one of the cores for certain programs (I, however haven\'t yet for some reason).

And no, it isn\'t very important at all.  I mean, you can probably run PS max with a 6800GS and a A64 3000+...

[Xordan]

Originally posted by Mezasa
I don\'t mean dual proc, I mean dual core.

Roughly the same optimizations.

[Mezasa]

Yes, for the most part, but dual proc has pretty much went away since the PIII days (unless you count xeons).

The only real reason I was asking about this is because some games require that you turn off one of your cores for the program to run right.  I\'ve yet to need that done, but I\'ve read that it was a pretty big issue for a lot of people

[Xordan]

I\'ll ask about it.

And dual/quad/multi processors are a huge buisness...  The AMD opteron was designed around being muti-processor.

Edit: Asked Jorrit and he said that there\'s no support at all for dual-core. So I guess it\'s just good coding that\'s the reason for it working.

[Mezasa]

People use quad Optys?  That\'s freaking insane O.o

I know it\'s probably in a really high end server, but still, that\'s powerful 8o

[Xordan]

4 isn\'t high end, more like entry level.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v40z/specs.jsp

This is high end:
http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/sunfire_e25k/specifications.jsp

And I\'ve seen servers with 500 opterons in.

[Mezasa]

All I can say is this:

 8o

[Vjorin]

That\'s still nothing...

At my college...Iowa State University, they recently purchase the words 73rd most powerfull super computer.  It contains something like 2048 processors.  I haven\'t seen it in person, but there was a picture of it on the home page yesterday.

Actually, just go here...

http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2006/jan/supercomputer.shtml

That\'s the news article.

Quade processor isn\'t a big deal, even so.  The xBOX 360 has something like two, quad core processors.  Or is it four duel core processors? I can\'t remember for sure.

[Xordan]

That supercomputer is still nothing...

compared to _the_ BlueGene/L anyway

I\'ve stood in a room containing a 500 opteron and a 1000 xeon supercomputer, along with a couple of other smaller ones. \\o/ Was really cool stuff. Very loud and windy, and the floor vibrated.