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For GPUs, memory compression isn't theoretical: they use it to compress frame, depth and stencil buffers to save bandwidth. Overall performance (i.e. frame rate
by ahartmetz 8y ago
For GPUs, memory compression isn't theoretical: they use it to compress frame, depth and stencil buffers to save bandwidth. Overall performance (i.e. frame rate) improvement is typically 10-20% AFAIK.
- sprash 8y agoYes it also only works well with GPUs. GPU-Ram communication is all about bandwidth. General purpose CPUs are all about latency. Only very specialized problems would benefit from memory compression. On the other Hand compression will increase latency which is counterproductive to any traditional CPU tasks.
- deagle50 8y agoEven though the trend is toward GPUs, we'll likely be running large amounts of throughput workloads on CPUs for another decade. A 5% reduction in power consumption is worth exploring. Is it bad that I'm looking forward to the end of Moore's law (a little)?
- ahartmetz 8y agoWith my specialty in native code, I am already benefiting from the end of Moore's law. Now, a factor 2 in performance actually matters. I also expect to see more specialized hardware and software to, say, feed 8K screens, process many small independent transactions (high core count servers), etc. There is going to be a lot of interesting performance work :)
- puzzle 8y agoI thought that HDMI and DisplayPort used compression, too, sometimes. Even then, your point about generic computing still stands.
- TomVDB 8y agoHDMI and DisplayPort have Display Stream Compression. However, there are currently no known sources that support it, and it’s a lossy compression. Since bandwidth requirements are going up faster than thr bandwidth of cables, one can expect DSC to be common once 8K displays are a thing.