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> To me the quote sounds pretty funny, because a cloud of 500 CPUs running Swift, right now, is way more expensive and way less efficient than a single GPU. The
by jb1991 6y ago
> To me the quote sounds pretty funny, because a cloud of 500 CPUs running Swift, right now, is way more expensive and way less efficient than a single GPU. The current generation of GPU have over 10k single-thread cores...
The number of threads in a GPU cannot be compared to the number of CPU threads or CPUs, especially in 3D rendering. CPU threads are vastly more independent and powerful than those on a GPU. GPU thread divergence places significant burden and limitations on the design of GPU kernels. Memory bandwidth is very costly as well. This is a very active and open research area for 3D rendering, and this Disney scene is designed to test those limitations (among other things). There is a reason why most of the 3D animated movies you see were rendered on CPUs.
- dahart 6y agoThose are good points, however 3d rendering is one domain where it does makes some sense to compare CPU & GPU threads, especially 3d game rendering. You certainly can compare threads between CPUs and GPUs for fp32 performance, if you have a pure compute workload without divergence. I work on OptiX, BTW, so I’m biased there, but there is also a reason why most commercial renderers are steadily moving toward the GPU. I predict it won’t be long before your statement flips and most CG movies are rendered on GPUs.