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Sort of. It's true a lot of this stuff was paid for by us gamers so that we could play Quake and stuff. UE is a lot more than a game engine these days. I've alw
by beebeepka 4y ago
Sort of. It's true a lot of this stuff was paid for by us gamers so that we could play Quake and stuff. UE is a lot more than a game engine these days. I've always been an id guy but I do consider UE a vital technology at this point. It really is because it can, and does, power so much more than games.
That said, these GPU and AI things started as US military project which trickled down to us
- paulmd 4y ago> That said, these GPU and AI things started as US military project which trickled down to us no, GPGPU started with opengl compute shaders, then CUDA packaged this into something not built around the graphics framework starting with the Tesla microarchitecture (6800/8800/200 series) and fully-programmable shaders. AI started really taking off during the maxwell era due to those gaming GPUs offering a fairly incredible amount of FP32 performance which was enough for ML (in contrast to prior HPC GPGPU which often focused on FP64). really at no point has GPU, GPGPU, or AI been a military thing that flowed to gaming, but completely the opposite. Or otherwise please explain what you mean because that's a very contrary perspective to the common view.
- iforgotpassword 4y agoGPUs came from the enterprise, and to an extend, military space. Just three letters, SGI. They built mighty expensive 3D accelerators that were used in prohibitively expensive setups for training pilots for example. They never saw the potential of a consumer grade version of their tech. It should be well known that 3dfx was founded by ex SGI employees.
- formerly_proven 4y agoRealtime 3D graphics were pioneered there, sure, but the laurels for "GPU on a chip" which sparked the 3D revolution firmly rest with nVidia and ATI.
- ogurechny 4y agoYou mean “3dfx”. Ironically, the original accelerators of both companies you've named were not a success in any way, and hardly contributed to the 3D revolution.
- pjmlp 4y agoAnd the only reason GL won over Glide was a certain game and its miniGL implementation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 4y agoNot really, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dlabs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dlabs Among others
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoThere is a gulf of 20-30 years between the events you are describing, and GPUs being used for serious ML jobs. During this entire time, GPU innovating was propelled forward by gaming.
- iforgotpassword 4y agoWhich is not relevant to the question of where it started?
- paulmd 4y agoackshually babbage’s difference engine was a commercial and scientific computer so I think you’ll find that’s where this all actually began, if you really understand the roots of the technology but oh no those trig tables were used for military ballistics, I am le owned!!! like sorry dude yes everyone here knows computing has always been intertwined with quasi-military applications like codebreaking ARPANET but this specific branch of tech has nothing more than broad general links that everything in computing shares. This particular tech is almost purely an outgrowth of gaming tech and that’s actually sort of unique and interesting in itself, don’t stifle substantive discussion just to throw in a “well ackshuyally” that’s not even very relevant, that’s very disruptive and antisocial. Please foster good discussion here, that’s the underlying mandate of this site.