NVIDIA’s Maxwell is Utterly Incapable of Performing Async Compute Says AMD




/ 9 years ago

amdradeon

The Ashes of the Singularity DirectX 12 benchmark results has caused a great deal of animosity between AMD and NVIDIA. Previously, one of Oxide’s developers commented on the recent furore and suggested NVIDIA GPUs would struggle to utilize Async Compute Cores which should lead to greater gains using DirectX 12. Unsurprisingly, this viewpoint has been categorically shared by AMD’s Technical Marketing Lead, Robert Hallock:

“Oxide effectively summarized my thoughts on the matter. NVIDIA claims “full support” for DX12, but conveniently ignores that Maxwell is utterly incapable of performing asynchronous compute without heavy reliance on slow context switching.
GCN has supported async shading since its inception, and it did so because we hoped and expected that gaming would lean into these workloads heavily. Mantle, Vulkan and DX12 all do. The consoles do (with gusto). PC games are chock full of compute-driven effects.
If memory serves, GCN has higher FLOPS/mm2 than any other architecture, and GCN is once again showing its prowess when utilized with common-sense workloads that are appropriate for the design of the architecture.”

In basic terms, it appears that the Async Compute Cores rely on context switching which means threads are stored to allow for future executions. A good analogy is hyperthreading which works in a similar way. This process requires a large computational workload and it’s unsure if Maxwell’s core architecture will receive any benefit from Async Compute Cores. Supposedly, using this method will actually result in poorer raw performance.

WCCFTech received a fairly meagre response from NVIDIA surrounding this matter, and PR manager Brian Burke said:

“We’re glad to see DirectX 12 titles showing up. There are many titles with DirectX 12 coming before the end of the year and we are excited to see them.”

With DirectX 12 being the most revolutionary API ever devised, the war of words based upon contrasting technological approaches was bound to occur. It will be fascinating to see if the trend towards AMD gains occurs across many DirectX 12 titles. Arguably, NVIDIA feels this will become an isolated incident.

Thank you WCCFTech for providing us with this information.


Topics: , , , , , ,

Support eTeknix.com

By supporting eTeknix, you help us grow and continue to bring you the latest newsreviews, and competitions. Follow us on FacebookTwitter and Instagram to keep up with the latest technology news, reviews and more. Share your favourite articles, chat with the team and more. Also check out eTeknix YouTube, where you'll find our latest video reviews, event coverage and features in 4K!

Looking for more exciting features on the latest technology? Check out our What We Know So Far section or our Fun Reads for some interesting original features.

eTeknix Facebook eTeknix Twitter eTeknix Instagram eTeknix Instagram
  • Be Social With eTeknix

    Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Reddit RSS Discord Patreon TikTok Twitch
  • Features


Send this to a friend
})