Dual-Core GPUs in the Future? Or am I being Ridiculous?

[ModestPenguin]

So is this going to happen?

Timeline?

Physically possible?

Cost Effective?

...

Discuss!

Edit: I r Stoopid.

 

[exabytes18]

Sure it will happen. nVidia offers cards that can be put into dual and quad SLI configurations. I believe these are two 7950GX2 that each have two 7900 GPUs.
4 GPUs and 2GB of GDDR3 RAM is quite the configuration.

Putting two GPUs together is far cheaper than trying to double the performance on a single card.

We will see single, dual, and (maybe, just maybe, a quad configuration) of graphics card offerings in the new Mac Pro. The quad requires tons of space, power, and the heat generated is also of concern.

 

[gnasher729]

So is this going to happen?

Timeline?

Physically possible?

Cost Effective?

...

Discuss!

Edit: I r Stoopid.

Happened many years ago. Any high end graphics card has several "cores", they just don't call them cores, they call them "pipelines". And usually, each pipeline is multithreaded to reduce latency (you wouldn't want to wait for texture reads, would you?), and each threads operates on four, eight or sixteen pixels in parallel, like Altivec or SSE3 on steroids.

 

[ModestPenguin]

Okay, I knew about the SLI configs, but i meant as in proessor architecture. Like the Core Duo Chips in my macs.

I didnt realize thats what the pipelines were. So Modern GPUS already are "multi core"?

thanks for explaining

 

[Killyp]

...
I didnt realize thats what the pipelines were. So Modern GPUS already are "multi core"?...

I don't know about the PS3 and Wii, but the 360 has 43 GPUs, admittedly each one is pretty weak.

It's like having 43 small elves being great at doing one thing and one thing only, than one huge great big ogre trying to do all 43 things at once....

And no I don't have any kind of mental prescription...

 

[gekko513]

Happened many years ago. Any high end graphics card has several "cores", they just don't call them cores, they call them "pipelines". And usually, each pipeline is multithreaded to reduce latency (you wouldn't want to wait for texture reads, would you?), and each threads operates on four, eight or sixteen pixels in parallel, like Altivec or SSE3 on steroids.

Yes, that's true. A die is already "multi core" with all the pipelines.

What we could see, though, is several dies on each chip, or several chips on each card. This should be theoretically possible since it will be a bit like SLI on but on one chip or one card instead of on different cards entirely. Intel was apparently planning on doing this with their Presler processors.

If it'll happen depends on whether it will make sense economically, I suppose. Will it be cheaper to cram on more pipelines on one die, thereby making it bigger and more prone to defects during production (lower yield), or will it be cheaper to keep the dies small with higher yield and cram two or more together on one chip in a second manufacturing step, of course with its own cost factors.