Viewing Post from Wednesday Aug 12, 2009
Tim Sweeney: "End of the GPU by 2020"
Tim Sweeney's been a man who's made a lot of interesting predictions on just how gaming - and PC hardware are going to evolve. His latest prediction:
We're all going back to software rendering.
Epic Games founder and 3D engine architect Tim Sweeney has presented what he calls "The end of the GPU roadmap", where he essentially says that GPU as we know them are too limited, and predicts that by 2020 developers will switch to a more flexible massively parallel programming model where all fixed functionality (texture filtering, anti-aliasing, rasterization) have been replaced with a software implementation, backed by massive computing power. There's no denying that such a perspective is exciting for software engineers, and T. Sweeney commands a lot of respect: the Unreal engine was one of the best software 3D engine before we all jumped onto the GPU boat and the Unreal Engine3 is used in about 150 games today.