Lucid Hydra on Smackover 2

[Shintai]

Shintai,

Hey bro... have you honestly made an effort to look at the technology and invest a bit of your time reading and understanding? They have 27 patents, some of the engineers behind this company are notable people within the industry.

The Hydra chip does know about the said card on the bus. This was already mentioned in their press release. Take time to read!

Whether or not it is true is another story...!

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Yes and I did since their demo. Also their release target is H1 2009.

Wow 27 patents. Thats so ensuring...

I could ask you the same thing if you even bothered to read anything. Because as I wrote before. This screams on locked/controlled HW.

Also I think you miss an extra layer that Lucid SW would provide. Also new cards would instantly ruin any hardwired information in the chip. Or perhaps even its capabilities. Plus any driver changes. The HYDRA chip does NOT know how the shaders etc work. Thats only something nVidia and AMD knows.
It might be easier for them to do it with Larrabee since its standard x86.

People lost focus and now its starting to be hyped into madness. Lucid showed 2 8800GT cards running in a controlled environment on non standard HW with x software. It was also timedemos running. No user input.

As said, using this with random x cards etc sounds like an epic nightmare that just wont work in reality.

[Xoulz]

Yes and I did since their demo. Also their release target is H1 2009.

Wow 27 patents. Thats so ensuring...

I could ask you the same thing if you even bothered to read anything. Because as I wrote before. This screams on locked/controlled HW.

Also I think you miss an extra layer that Lucid SW would provide. Also new cards would instantly ruin any hardwired information in the chip. Or perhaps even its capabilities. Plus any driver changes. The HYDRA chip does NOT know how the shaders etc work. Thats only something nVidia and AMD knows.

People lost focus and now its starting to be hyped into madness. Lucid showed 2 8800GT cards running in a controlled environment on non standard HW with x software. It was also timedemos running. No user input.

As said, using this with random x cards etc sounds like an epic nightmare that just wont work in reality.

Your quick, {I edited my post a bit..!}

Anyways, I really think your argument is lacking.
Updating the Hydra chip can be as easy as firmware or even just a new driver, etc. I've never seen you be such a naysayer before and I'm somewhat dumbfounded as to your reluctancy to accept this technology for what it is.

Nobody is saying it will work flawlessly, seeing this is first gen, but over a few years, it may be 100% scalability with all the problem you are suggesting removed.

Just look at the shaky history of SLI... after 5 years, it still isn't resolved!




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[Xoulz]

Yes and I did since their demo. Also their release target is H1 2009.

Wow 27 patents. Thats so ensuring...

I could ask you the same thing if you even bothered to read anything. Because as I wrote before. This screams on locked/controlled HW.

Also I think you miss an extra layer that Lucid SW would provide. Also new cards would instantly ruin any hardwired information in the chip. Or perhaps even its capabilities. Plus any driver changes. The HYDRA chip does NOT know how the shaders etc work. Thats only something nVidia and AMD knows.
It might be easier for them to do it with Larrabee since its standard x86.

People lost focus and now its starting to be hyped into madness. Lucid showed 2 8800GT cards running in a controlled environment on non standard HW with x software. It was also timedemos running. No user input.

As said, using this with random x cards etc sounds like an epic nightmare that just wont work in reality.

You edited your post too..


Anyways, updating can be as easily as firmware or driver update, etc.

What I do not understand, is your unwillingness to admit that the Hydra chip would know the general capabilities of each video card on it's bus.



All that is pre-determined by the actual architecture of the chip. If you are playing a game with heavy shaders and having two different video cards, the Hydra chip would know that the 800 SIMD's on the HD4870 would make more efficient use of this, etc.



Secondly, I think Lucid has been mum about their work because of their patents. I think they did solve what has been plaguing the multi-GPU market and have been busy refining their product. Why would nVidia or AMD embrace this? They are cutting the SLI market off at the head. Because even an old 8800 is no longer worthless. you do not have to keep buying newer and newer cards. Someone can have a HD3850, HD 4850 on the same system and have more graphics power than a HD4870.

Where-as before the HD3850 would be relegated to an older system, become a mantle piece or given away...





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[Shintai]

You edited your post too..


Anyways, updating can be as easily as firmware or driver update, etc.

What I do not understand, is your unwillingness to admit that the Hydra chip would know the general capabilities of each video card on it's bus.

(Removed useless image)

All that is pre-determined by the actual architecture of the chip. If you are playing a game with heavy shaders and having two different video cards, the Hydra chip would know that the 800 SIMD's on the HD4870 would make more efficient use of this, etc.





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You are assuming abit too much already.

First of all that the Hydra chip knows its a shader heavy game.
Secondly the Hydra chip have no clue what goes over the PCIe bus to the card itself. Besides textures and framebuffer copy thats is easily read. But shader instructions etc...nopes.

The Hydra chip aint the key, its a semi dumb device. The software needed is.
What the hydra chip will do is simply splitting tagged data and combining 2 framebuffers and send it back to 1 GPU.

The combining is the easy part. The first part might stop after a simple driver update from nVidia/AMD. Since the data it needs to spy on and tag is different. Unless AMD/nVidia actively backs this. It wont go anywhere but consoles.

Plus this have the potential to make microshutter look like nothing.

Also your edit about using different generation cards is utter garbage to say it mildly. Sorry. But you have a featureset and a game engine. And you would sit with previous card features instead. As you would have to follow the lowest determinator.

Just like physics. Using old cards is a joke and will always be.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossf...ics/index.html

Btw, did you notice the complete lack of FPS numbers in the Lucid demo? I mean if I had something with 100% scaling. I would show 1 8800GT vs 2...specially when you claim it.

[Xoulz]

You are assuming abit too much already.

First of all that the Hydra chip knows its a shader heavy game.
Secondly the Hydra chip have no clue what goes over the PCIe bus to the card itself. Besides textures and framebuffer copy thats is easily read. But shader instructions etc...nopes.

The Hydra chip aint the key, its a semi dumb device. The software needed is.
What the hydra chip will do is simply splitting tagged data and combining 2 framebuffers and send it back to 1 GPU.

The combining is the easy part. The first part might stop after a simple driver update from nVidia/AMD. Since the data it needs to spy on and tag is different. Unless AMD/nVidia actively backs this. It wont go anywhere but consoles.

Plus this have the potential to make microshutter look like nothing.

The Hydra chip is all about LOAD BALANCING.....! It's main job is to know what the game is doing, and to know what resources are available to it and using the best graphics card to render aspects of the game, etc.

How this is actually done has not been released as has remained a secret..!

Though, with so many patents involved, one would have to suggest that it is true. Doubting it is natural, but to turn a blind eye and say it is a hoax is being a tad ignorant!

Even if it is 80% scaling with some graphic anomolies... it is a win/win for gamers.




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[Shintai]

The Hydra chip is all about LOAD BALANCING.....! It's main job is to know what the game is doing, and to know what resources are available to it and using the best graphics card to render aspects of the game, etc.

How this is actually done has not been released as has remained a secret..!

Though, with so many patents involved, one would have to suggest that it is true. Doubting it is natural, but to turn a blind eye and say it is a hoax is being a tad ignorant!

Even if it is 80% scaling with some graphic anomolies... it is a win/win for gamers.




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Im not saying its a hoax. And you now say that Lucid will test and make profiles for every game? You cant load balance something if you dont know what it is. And you need software to tag and determine it.

I guess you have your mind set on that this is a PC revolution. Where I just think its a console revolution. The Hydra 100 chip aint even PCIe 2.0.

What DirectX versions are supported or will be supported and what about OpenGL? Right now, only DX9 is working though DX10.1 will be ready by the end of the year. With DX10 and DX11's implementations of multi-GPU data improving and adding to the HYDRA Engine technology will only get easier for team compared to the work they had to do on DX9. OpenGL is supported by the HYDRA Engine as well.

Of course, not all is golden for Lucid quite yet - we have some questions and concerns about the technology that we hope will be addressed as the technology matures. Top on my list is the support that Lucid will be required to maintain if the technology succeeds. While much of the HYDRA Engine is automated there will be times when new games, new game engines and new rendering methods will be implemented by game developers that will require continual updating and tweaking on the driver side of the technology. With as large as NVIDIA's and AMD's driver teams are, even they cannot always keep up with the many games that are released throughout the year.

My other major concern is that this technology could end up like AGEIA's PhysX - great potential but gobbled up by one of the mega-players rather than turning into a product on its own. Honestly after hearing the entire presentation I was curious why NVIDIA or AMD hadn't already thought of this - the potential for being bought up is extremely high here.

How can Lucid be sure their task based distribution methods accurately represent what the game designers intended? An interesting dilemma - with the company essentially taking control of the graphics pipeline there are all kinds of ways for the company to accidently screw some things up. Lucid answered this by telling us their quality assurance program was already well under way. In fact, they use a pixel-by-pixel comparison engine comparing the HYDRA images to a single GPU render to check for errors or problems.

As for the chip itself, obviously Lucid is being very close lipped about it. The chip runs very cool and draws just about 5 watts of power. Inside the chip you will find small RISC processor and the custom (secret sauce) logic behind the algorithm powering the HYDRA Engine. The production chip was JUST finished yesterday and will be sampling to partners soon - though they wouldn't indicate WHO those partners were.

[Xoulz]

Im not saying its a hoax. And you now say that Lucid will test and make profiles for every game? You cant load balance something if you dont know what it is. And you need software to tag and determine it.

I guess you have your mind set on that this is a PC revolution. Where I just think its a console revolution. The Hydra 100 chip aint even PCIe 2.0.

Understood, but to be 99% efficient with certain aspect of the rendering process, the chip will probably need updates. But even without them, the Hydra Chip's design is inherently better than the SLI solution.

A "profile" may increase a certain games performance say another 7%, or remove an anomaly, but understand, we are talking about a processor solely dedicated to nothing but guiding information on a PCIe bus. A new motherboard design is required to make use of this technology!



Secondly, I understand it's limits, but that doesn't mean other products or revisions are not in testing or development. Lucid is probably releasing this chip for a revenue stream before setting their sights on the PCIe 3.0 standard.

As with anything in the hardware world, update or die..!




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