Play Crysis on Your Cellphone; Thank AMD
What kind of supercomputer can pre-render HD content, temporarily store it in a virtual cloud, and then stream it across the Internet to numerous portable devices? Why, AMD's upcoming Fusion Render Cloud, of course!
Sounds too good to be true? You bet it does, yet that is exactly what AMD promised today at CES 2009. Basically, the massively parallel supercomputer will enable content providers to deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet. This means the calculating beast will bring HD media to laptops, smartphones and other devices through server-side rendering. Once rendered, the machine throws the "visually rich" content into a compute cloud (aka HD Cloud Computing), compresses it, and streams it real-time over wireless and broadband connections to devices that can't otherwise handle the rendering. Woof.
“AMD has a long track record in the supercomputing world. Seven out of 10 of the world’s fastest machines, including the fastest two computers on the planet, are powered by AMD hardware,” said Meyer. “Today, AMD is pleased to announce a new kind of supercomputer unlike any other ever built. It is being designed to break the one petaFLOPS barrier, and to process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics processors. We anticipate it to be the fastest graphics supercomputer ever. And it will be powered by OTOY’s software for a singular purpose: to make HD cloud computing a reality. We plan to have this system ready by the second half of 2009.”
So what's under the hood of this beast? According to the company, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud will include AMD Phenom II processors, AMD 790 chipsets, and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphic processors. OTOY throws in its innovative software, taking full advantage of AMD's box of goods that together will make streaming HD possible.
“By fusing industry-leading CPU technology with computationally dense, massively parallel graphics processors, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can rival the world’s most powerful industrial computing devices, but require just a fraction of the floor space, power envelope and cost associated with many of today’s leading supercomputers,” said Jules Urbach, Chief Executive Officer, OTOY. “Combined with the power of OTOY’s revolutionary and flexible software platform, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can transform the entertainment industry and remove the technical barriers between consumers and first-rate content experiences.”
According to the company, AMD plans to provide the hardware and engineering resources for the AMD Fusion Render Cloud, with OTOY providing technical software development and a middleware layer.
Go AMD Phenom II wasn't a bad release you still have some more ground to make up.
When do you think this will go mainstream anyways?
THG, your doing a damn good job reporting on CES!
I agree, but soemthing like final fantasy could move away from the console/Pc environment.
handheld game devices that plays 3D MMO titles, wow!
though that will require constant and reliable wireless access.
Of course, this will be a slow process. But if you turn the heat up by only one degree every hour, you can boil a toad alive.
They'll start by selling it to the high end market. Then, a few companies will stop making CD's, and make the switch to producing exclusively in digital.
Eventually, the only option to get media will be to pay for access to the central supercomputer's storage.
Who ever controls (owns) the central computer will control all who access it.
ANYWAYS, Crysis will never play on a cell phone as it does on a PC. Why? One word: resolution.
I don't care how good your frame rate it. 1920x1200 looks better than 80x60 any day.
I could have 100fps on max setting too if I changed my resolution to 80x60, but my monitor doesn't support it.
But therein lies the real problem. Once a central computer does all the rendering for us, net neutrality will be over. And I mean, fucking OVER.
I really don't give a shit about gaming on a cell phone, but that isn't what this article is about. This article is about paving the way for the government and media corporations to gain control of the last free media source.
And because of that, I am now going to seed 10 HD quality DVD rips, and go to bed.
Fuck you Hollywood. I'll never pay for your bullshit. Maybe if you stopped paying your actors millions of dollars, and lowered the going rate of movies to 2 bucks, I'd start paying to see movies again. But 20 million dollars to get Jim Carrey to star in a film? Paramedics don't make that much in a year! Until people who save lives get paid more than actors, Hollywood and the music industry can take a flying fuck.
Gentlemen, start your torrents.
You can EASILY play World of Warcraft with 300-500 ms. Also it isn't so straight forward, companies will have to redesign their Software to make it "Supercomputer friendly".
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"The reason MMOs do so well is because the rendering is all done client-side"
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I really don't know much about graphics but heres goes something to think about:
Right now:
1000 people in 1 City = 1000 Calculations of geometry, physics, lighting, shades, textures... etc...
With Supercomputers:
1000 People in 1 City = 1 Calculation of Geometry, physics, lighting, shades, Textures... etc...
Yes you need a badass Supercomputer to do all the calculations then adjust the settings so each player gets its little piece of the screen. But I think that's the whole idea... isn't it?
"Twicth" games (RTS/FPS) could only be played if the streaming is the video streaming is smooth enough, after all you don't need to do calculations in the client if the super computer is fast enough. I'm sure games like Starcraft, Warcraft III and Counterstrike could be adjusted to be played via streaming.
Did you ever think that they could just decode HIGHLY COMPRESSED video of LOW RESOLUTION for mobile devices? Basically making streaming much easier...
Think of the possibilities, AMD is not foolish and I think they are making some really good Business decisions here.
So what you're looking at in this cloud computing situation is you're sending input commands to the server just like an MMO. The server just puts the render together, and instead of returning a basic packet for the client to know how to react, it's linking in a live / active video stream. It's a good idea, but I'd have to see it in use (including server usage numbers) at something like a couple hundred simultaneous players. Then I could actually have a good idea as to how effective it would be.
LOL, Yea, good to see AMD's marketing dept finally got something right.
OMG it's big brother! 1984! Game over man, game over!!!
So, you're basically saying...
Due to this technology that AMD is "talking" about, not even demoing yet, you feel it's your right to pirate movies. Yeah, I can see the connecting logic there. ><
I don't even see a mention of Hollywood, actors or paramedics for that matter in the article, but somehow, this is all a conspiracy for the man to take control of your life?
While I agree, that people who are out saving lives, should earn easily as much as a successful, read that again, successful, actor... Capitalism says no. The reason I say successful, is because there are a lot of "starving" actors out there who don't make any more than your average paramedic does. There are probably more actors/actresses out there who make less money than a paramedic, than the ones who end up being successful like Jim Carey, Jennifer Love Hewitt or Brad Pitt.
However, the US is not a communist-lite country and fortunately or unfortunately (however you wish to look at it), those who bring in the biggest amount of cash, make the most money. Now, while there might be exceptions to the rule, as long as we're a capitalist or even democratic-socialist society, it's just the way the cookie crumbles. While it might or might not be moral, it ultimately comes down to your own personal ethics.
Just like you, choosing to allow people to leach technically stolen property, which I'm going to assume you never paid for either, it comes down to personal ethics.
Unfortunately for you, that is if you live in the US, when you're "seeding" HD-movie content, you're breaking the current laws of the nation.. While, on the other hand, over-paying someone for their performance in a movie or on a football field, is legal even if it is ridiculous.
So, to sum it all up, there is no way you can claim a moral high-ground with your little rant. While your message of "those who save lives should be on equal footing (in terms of income) as those who act in big budget films", comes off as morally righteous.. The value behind it is lost, when you decide to break laws as some type of "retaliation" against "big brother" for a perceived injustice which doesn't even exist yet (AMD's cloud computing idea).
I may, or may not agree with you as well, but I'm mostly just playing devil's advocate here. You could easily stand the high ground with your message, but it falls on deaf ears when you become a hypocrite.
On another note, I think the crucial word in this article is "streaming". As anyone will know, streaming is fine until you have to wait for it to rebuffer. Nothing like getting in to a movie and then suddenly have it rebuffer, let alone a video game.
Imagine how many car accidents we'd see daily if people could play WoW on their cell phones... It's bad enough how many folks talk / text while driving, let alone now they can play WoW someday. That way they can still go to school or work & make money, yet play WoW.
Not sure that's something our economy needs right now.
I don't go to football games,they're complete ripoffs.Of course I have pirated before,but that's often because I cannot physically buy it in a store(and not bestbuy or circuit city) or if there is a store it's 100 or more miles away.