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[monkeymagic]

I think the case of console developers being lazy and being unable to cope with multi-threading has been overblown as always and it's clear that the majority of game development budgets are going to be spent on art and assets as opposed to engines next gen.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27459

XBox 360 ugly rumours and rumours of single threading explored

Of the 20 or so first gen games coming out this year, I got letters from two of the teams. The first was from David Wu, President/Director of Technology at Pseudo Interactive, and they are doing a game called Full Auto. His response to the threading issue was as follows:

We are developing Full Auto for XBOX 360 and it uses all 3 cores (and all 6 threads). It will be released in the launch window.

Short but sweet. The next one was from a programmer on the absolutely astounding looking title Oblivion from Bethesda Softworks. He said:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, being developed for XBox 360 as well as PC, is HEAVILY multithreaded and definitely takes advantage of Xbox 360's multiple cores (and on PC, will benefit from multiple CPUs and hyperthreading as well.) Unfortunately your information source is incorrect.

 

[Wario64]

i'm glad Full Auto and Oblivion are launch games.

 

[Deg]

-The Inquirer-

 

[FightyF]

CoD2 is also multithreaded.

 

[krypt0nian]

COD2 has been using one core for AI for ages.

 

[Kleegamefan]

i'm glad Full Auto and Oblivion are launch games.

:lol :lol :lol

 

[raYne]

i'm glad Full Auto and Oblivion are launch games.

:lol

 

[sirris]

Oh man. Now everyone is going to compare everything to Full Auto as "X360's full potential". I can see the threads now...

 

[Kleegamefan]

Oh man. Now everyone is going to compare everything to Full Auto as "X360's full potential". I can see the threads now...

Well played :lol

 

[Chittagong]

PGR3 uses 3 cores. Physics, AI and Sounds.

 

[Fuma]

PGR3 uses 3 cores. Physics, AI and Sounds.

Where did you hear this? Do you have a link?

 

[radrelic]

PDZ uses all 3 cores as well

 

[xexex]

I read that COD2 uses one core just for the smoke effects. dat true?

 

[Chittagong]

Where did you hear this? Do you have a link?

Producer of the game at GDCE in London this year. Don't have a link, I was there to listen.

 

[Shompola]

I read that COD2 uses one core just for the smoke effects. dat true?

If true, it means that they still havent taken advantage of multithreading properly unless the smoke effects uses all the process cycles provided by that core.

I think the evolution looks like this wich also makes sense.

1) single core, very balanced on that particular core obviously
2) multi core, but a lot of potential is lost because of very modest use, weak load balance, cores idle much more than they should
3) more extensive use of the cores, tasks are more evenly distributed among the cores. Better load balance, less idleing.

 

[Mrbob]

It'll be a couple years before using all 3 cores effectively will be a reality.

 

[Juice]

All games use all three cores in a sense.

Cores [1] and [2] are both about 5% time reserved by system processes (networking, I/O, dashboard shit)

Core [0] is fully in the hands of the developer and the main game controller core.

So I don't think it's possible to truly say that while playing a game the 360 isn't using all three cores.

 

[xexex]

I'm thinking Halo 3 will make fairly effective use of all 3 cores for the game/physics/visuals

not just mimimally using core 1 and core 2 like launch games.