Multi-core and cell processors for games

May 24th, 2007 by tim finin

The game industry has a strong need for software engineers that know how to take advantage of the new multi-core and cell processors. An article in CNET (Game developers adapt to multi-core world, explains it this way:

PC game developers appear to finally be getting the message: the free ride is over.

For years, developers were able to take advantage of faster and faster processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. All they had to do was write their program once, and it would run faster and faster as Intel and AMD cranked up the clock speed.

But overheating forced chip companies to adopt designs with two or more processor cores running at slower speeds, which meant that some applications written to run on a single thread couldn’t take advantage of that extra horsepower. This has required an entirely new way of looking at software development, prompting Intel this week to release another batch of software development tools aimed at helping developers make that transition.uote>

The CSEE department will offer its course on Parallel and Distributed Processing next in the Spring of 2008. In the mean time, if you are interested in exploring how to use these new architectures, you might check out Intel’s Multi-Core webinar series.

Posted in CS, Parallel programming, Programming, UMBC classes |

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• UMBC Multicore Computing Center
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• Understanding Nintendo’s success with the Wii

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