Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/04/11/03:42:32
Peter Berdeklis <peter AT atmosp DOT physics DOT utoronto DOT ca> wrote:-
> ... There's nothing you can do about a slow bus, except maybe to push the
> TURBO BUTTON! ...
Or to quit forking out for ever-increasing bus fares and get a motorcycle.
> Ray tracing is different because the calculations performed in generating
> the rays far outweigh the time required to send the image to screen. Ray
> tracing is very computationally expensive (which is why it's not used in
> games - although everyone would love to) and so there isn't much waiting
> around for the bus. ...
Sorry to be off-topic, but that looks like the sort of operation where
genuine parallel processing would be useful. E.g. about 20 years ago I heard
of a computer called the `Connection Machine', which acted somewhat like
0x10000 Commodore Pets serial-numbered from 0 to 0xffff all sharing one
control unit; each was linked to the 16 others whose serial numbers had one
bit different. So it could do the same thing to up to 0x10000 elements of an
array at once. When will something like that be available in PC's?
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