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You don't need preemptive multitasking for a known set of games, though; context switching can occur at frame boundaries (or even finer-grained than that, the G
by tmurray 14y ago
You don't need preemptive multitasking for a known set of games, though; context switching can occur at frame boundaries (or even finer-grained than that, the GPU just has to go idle in some sense). It's necessary for GPGPU because you may have one kernel that runs for 10 minutes, but that's not the case with graphics apps (especially not a known set).
I also question the need for one VM per client. There's a very small set of inputs (input devices from the client) and a lot of static output (rendered frame). Why not share the same VM for a set of games that share the same GPU?
- newhouseb 14y agoI have no inside knowledge into OnLive, but you're correct, you could certainly context switch for games. I would assume that the limiting factor would likely be texture bandwidth if you were switching between too many different scenes (on the same or multiple VMs). It might be that some of OnLive's IP is smartly managing resources in n->1 VM->GPU configurations (and maybe why games IIRC require some adaptation).