Unified Memory Pools and Data Exchange among Next Gen GPU's and CPU's

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DirkXXVI

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Jun 27, 2013
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In following the pre-release descriptions of the next gen GPU's I've seen a lot of references to CPU and GPU's freely exchanging data.

For Example in the case of Nvidia's upcoming Maxwell line:
"The biggest enhancement in the Maxwell architecture will be the addition of hooks that could unify GPU and CPU memory. GPU memory will be able to read CPU memory and vice versa, and the shared memory resources will make it easier for developers to write applications, Huang said."
Click to expand...

I've also seen AMD reference "heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access"

Just curious what this meant in laymen terms for gaming and if it's realistic to expect significant improvements in regards to real world performance.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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The issue is a little complicated, but the quick answer is NO for a regular desktop PC situation in the near future.

PS4/XBONE:
These systems have a unified memory setup as well, however the key difference is they have the same PHYSICAL memory pool to draw from so access speed is the same.

PC:
A gaming rig has the System RAM (i.e. DDR3) installed on the motherboard. The Video RAM is generally faster and on the graphics card.

Microsoft just recently demonstrated a technique (forget name) which was running a SHARED pool of over 3GB (System and VRAM). When you wanted to ZOOM into the surface of the planet the data in this section was quickly copied into VRAM and processed by the GPU.

However, note the limitation of the fact it has to be MOVED into the VRAM. This technique is also nearly identical to that used by the game RAGE called "Megatextures."

Maxwell:
It's difficult to comment on this specifically, but let's keep in mind that game developers have to optimize for the most COMMON hardware. They aren't going to spend a lot of money optimizing code until there's a good financial reason to do so.

So my final answer is NO, don't expect much in the near future. What is POSSIBLE to do and what WILL be done in the near-term is completely different.
 
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