AMD Next-Gen GPU Runs Crysis on iPhone
OTOY demonstrated its game streaming service by running Crysis on an iPhone and using AMD's latest GPU server-side.
Yesterday Ars Technica reported that it attended an AMD event on board the USS Hornet, and was able to check out the company's future products first-hand. Although the site was floored by 2.5 teraFLOPS of floating-point power provided by AMD's next-gen GPU, Ars seemed rather tickled to see all that processing power enabling a Crysis demo to run on an iPhone. In fact, Ars said it was probably "the most profoundly intriguing use of AMD's upcoming GPU."
That's right, Crysis. OTOY was responsible for such a feat, offering a service that supposedly delivers 3D games in real-time across the Internet without bogging down the target device, whether it's a low-end PC or, in this case, Apple's iPhone. The process works by rendering the game on a server machine (notably using AMD's new GPU no less), and the frames are grabbed by OTOY's server-side software. The frames are then compressed and delivered over the network to the client. The client software thus decompresses the frames and displays them in a window. User input is then sent back to the server over UDP.
In the case of the Crysis demo, the presentation appeared to work flawlessly. "The iPhone's screen was small enough that I couldn't discern any compression artifacts, and the gameplay was smooth and responsive," said Ars Technica's Jon Stokes. "Aside from the half-baked control scheme, which was apparently hacked together at the last minute, this really was Crysis running on an iPhone."
Stokes did bring up a good point in his hands-on with the Crysis demo: why would AMD/ATI think that streaming games across the Internet is a good long-term idea? After all, wouldn't the company make more money off gamers and general consumers purchasing new graphics cards than gaming services upgrading their render farms? More than likely the company probably sees the streaming market as a new source of revenue in addition to current consumer consumption... at least for now.
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Nice!! I wonder how long it will take for this sort of service to hit us consumers?
For a minute there you had me thinking that the iPhone was somehow actually running Crysis.
I have to admit that that 2.5 TFLOPs number is still making my jaw drop. My entire system (still running dual 8800GTS 640s + a Q6600) is like...half of that...
I knew AMD had something up their sleeves. This explains why AMD's stock has been going up so much. Those stock market guys always know whats going on before everyone else.
that's all fine, but... will it run crys... ...
Careful, if you die (in Crysis), the iPhone overheats self and explodes at your expense.
I think Hardware is going to be like CDs and DVDs...Most people still want to be able to touch their stuff. Not to say that digital delivery is bad, just look at CD and DVD sales though, people still buy these things.
WOW running crysis at 320x240 resolution is easy... lol.
But can it play Crysis?
US Fiber Optic networks are still half a decade from doing this type of service well. I would imagine you could get a larger profit from this over selling a GPU. The systems would probably cost $1k/year to maintain. With a simple $10/month premium and a large enough farm, you could easily expect to have atleast 10 people on every system considering for how long a period of time people play a game.
Now how many pigeons did it take to get Crysis running on the iPhone?
That's not Crysis...the whole hoopla about Crysis was it's graphics, which can't be done on that tiny screen. They duplicated Crysis's gameplay for the iPhone...which is nothing significant. At all.
Sure, it ran on that single iPhone. What happens when tens of millions of people try to play it at once? There's no way their network would be able to hold up, and the added latency would cause considerable lag.
Are we moving back to terminal based computing but on a global scale? I think that we are...
does not count if its not max settings. iphone is still a POS for doucebags
lol just wait till the iphones get overloaded on their shitty little processors and explode.
Jesus, I just can't get over the negativity!!! WHERE is this coming from!? The iPhone is FRIGGIN AWESOME but FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE!!! AMD/ATI makes awesome video cards! Sweet! Glad they found some other use! I am personally creep'd the hell out by the whole render farm idea.. I like being at home with my machine. Having someone else render it for me sounds kind of weird. I seriously pay attention to detail and nit-pick EVERYTHING, so when I see people bash the iPhone, I just cannot figure out what is so bad about them? I mean, if you just wan't to say, "ThE iFone SuCkS!!" Then, be my guest but personally I wish that crap was kept to yourselves, unless you have a reason you don't like it? I would love to see some back ups. Serious.
i need to see video or it never happened
OK I have 1 grenade.. CRAP!! IM HOLDING IT AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!..
--Iphone explodes--
I Think what people are really trying to get at here is that its not really Crysus. The title says "AMD Next-Gen GPU Runs Crysis on iPhone" which is obviously there to get your attention.
As others have said before me, what makes Crysis hard to run is the Graphics. What the title should say is:
"Stream FPS's to your iPhone via new AMD GPU".
Haha at first i thought they were rendering the game on the iPhone itself. Now that'll be the day
have any of these companies thought about ping times, if a enemy runs up to you, you don't want a 60-300ms delay in your actions. a 10ms delay in a mouses power saving is enough to get you killed
Well the scalability of millions of players will be easy if the calculations are server side on the farm however the BANDWIDTH of the ISP would be a problem however interestingly enough a technnology such as streaming torrents could in theory lighting the load of this but that goes out the window when cheaters would hijack your packet to see where you are in the game world so yeah this is basically not a good idea for serious competitive gameplay.
Careful, if you die (in Crysis), the iPhone overheats self and explodes at your expense.
"If you die inside Crysis, YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE!"
This will only work in countries that are capable of streaming that much data cheaply.
I don't think it's that surprising running crysis in DX9mode, 640x400 pixels or like...
"If you die inside Crysis, YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE!"
at apple, GAME PLAYS YOU!!!
all I can say is nice!!!!!!
I wonder what kind of internet bandwidth you'll need to run something like that...
What about latency? I see that as the true bane.
We would all have to run fiber optics for max bandwidth, optimized hubs and firewalls for optimal latency etc. etc.
Good idea, but it's quite an investment. .
For a minute there you had me thinking that the iPhone was somehow actually running Crysis. I have to admit that that 2.5 TFLOPs number is still making my jaw drop. My entire system (still running dual 8800GTS 640s + a Q6600) is like...half of that...
Yea 2.5 TFLOPs is a lot of data being pushed. But only for stuff like medical where they use real time rendering or F@H. Only wish that number = the real performance because it would kill everything....
Folding@Home in total pushes 5 petaFLOPS but it can't run Crysis.
this is one of the problems with con\/entional thinking. We tend to think about how your game software runs now. rendering one frame at a time, just what you see. I'd ha\/e to ask this simple question... if you ha\/e a massi\/e gpu farm, and a near unlimited expense (compared to your a\/erage gamer), why not just render the entire world all at once, hand it o\/er to memory and only submit it back to the gpu when changes are made by the player? I know it's hard to wrap your head around, but gi\/en that entire game worlds are exactly the same until you change them, they would technically only ha\/e to render the world once, then update it as it changes. almost like a pre-render, only changeable. I ha\/e no idea how to code it, but i can see a gpu farm rendering an entire island rather than just what you can see at a 90 degree angle from the camera's point of \/iew. shit don't ask me, might just be easier to dedicate an at cost gpu to each ser\/ice subscriber, that can't cost the mfg half of what we pay for them, and when you can dump 4 of them in a system, f-it. that's 1 system, four subscribers (or more if multiple instances of said game can be rendered on one gpu) at say 10-20 bucks a month. you\/e made your money back by the end of the year. and the old gpu systems as they cycle can be used for older games as time goes on. remember, ati doesn't pay 200 dollars to mfg the cards, WE PAY 200 dollars for them to be designed, built, shipped, stored, marketed, and shipped again. ATI only as to pay for the design, build, ship part of the equation if they own the ser\/ers. Not to mention they could license the tech out to other companies and still make profit on the parts AND the ser\/ice.
anywho, i kind of like the idea of being able to play higher end games on the go for a fee, pro\/ided that fee isn't too large. Not to mention the fact that hardware prices for portable "game systems" wouldn't be nearly as high if implemented properly.
anywho, i'm out to go use my own in system \/ideo card.