Nvidia warns multicore CPUs could stiff innovation

CHIEF SCIENTIST David Kirk told the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University that programming technology faces problems because of multithreading and multicore introductions.

The EE Times reported Kirk as saying that chip architects are moving quickly to multicore and multithreading designs but that could mean a slowdown to graphics performance.

CPU manufacturers like Intel are positioning dual core and multicore processors as if they doubled the "brain power" but Kirk seems to be suggesting graphics processors are quite a bit brainier than Intel or AMD dual core chips.

One problem with multicore CPUs is that gaming programmers find them hard to exploit, with the second core providing no appreciable benefit.

Applications can run slower on multicore processors while graphics processors are "embarrasingly parallel", said the EE Times, here.

The Geforce graphics chip used for the Playstation 3 provides more floating point operations than the Cell chip it's supposed to support, he said. µ