Gaming Systems Reaching 'Tens of Teraflops' by 2019
Nvidia says gaming systems of 2019 will be able to render today's cut-scenes and cinematics in real-time, and reach a performance of "tens of teraflops."
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on Wednesday that gaming systems will likely reach a performance of "tens of teraflops" by 2019, and be capable of rendering real-time visuals equal to the pre-rendered cutscenes and cinematics we currently see in games today. These systems will eventually have the same level of performance as some of today's supercomputers, he said.
As it stands now, the PlayStation 3 has a peak speed of only a several hundred gigaflops. But by the end of the decade, gaming systems will feature computing speeds matching the Red Storm supercomputer which was initially designed to reach 41.5 teraflops (a trillion floating point operations per second). Despite that kind of horsepower, they won't require megawatts of power to operate, but instead will consume the same amounts of power as today's machines.
"We will be able to deliver that level of capability in 2019 in a game console with a 100 watts," Huang said.
Huang went on to talk about making improvements to the performance of GPUs in supercomputers a top priority. Currently Nvidia has GPUs installed in some of the world's fastest supercomputers which, when paired with CPUs, allow for higher speeds and better performance without the need for extra loads of power. Huang said this should allow for a supercomputer to have a peak speed of an exaflop (quintillion operations per second) by the year 2019 using only 20 megawatts.
IDG News reports that U.S.-based supercomputer Titan will use 18,000 Nvidia GPUs when construction is finally completed, and will feature a peak speed of 20 petaflops. The world's fastest supercomputer, Japan's K computer, only has a peak speed of 8 petaflops and consumes around 10 megawatts of juice.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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de5_Roy nvidia eh.. they will reach that kind of computing power while consuming obscene amount of electric power like their current cards. nvidia should implement better power management in their gpus.Reply -
Netherscourge Yea, but nobody will take the time to put that much effort into a game in the first place.Reply
1. They want the game to run on as many platforms as possible (mobile, tablets, laptops, etc...) That right there will be the "bottleneck"
2. They will want to ship their games as fast as possible. Taking extra time to pump out a game that needs 10 Tflops probably won't get enough of a return to make it profitable in the first place.
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Netherscourge lahawzelWonder what AMD has to say about this...Reply
The usual - whatever Nvidia does, we will make sure we do better - even if it means making a PCIe card that barely fits into your Tower Case and needs 20 or 30 PSU connectors. -
mcd023 i still don't think that we have single cards doing quite the pre-rendered scenes from 5 or 8 years ago. They look really good today, but they had a lot more polygons. I'd say close though! Although 3 580s in SLI just about do it. hahaReply -
lca1443 I've always wondered what the point of these articles are?Reply
News flash everything will be more advanced in the future!..........no way, really -
RipperjackAU lca1443News flash everything will be more advanced in the future!..........no way, reallyReply
If what the Mayans have been predicting about 2012 is true... well... it might not be. -
rohitbaran Well, rendering cut scenes in current game engines in real time with 10 year later hardware doesn't sound that impressive. By the year 2019, when game engines would also have evolved to better visual levels, games will be developed with those engines and then again it won't be possible to render cut scenes in real time.Reply