Qestion to AMDMatt in regards to Froblins Demo and AI on the GPU

[Calin Banc]

Hi Matt,

Back in Nov. 2008 AMD has shown a great demo that put into perspective the AI accelerated on the GPU. Back then, a 1TF card (HD4850) was capable of doing 3000AIs while also handling the 3D rendering part.

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/10612/amd_releases_dx10_1_tech_demo_froblins/index.html

The Froblins demo is designed to showcase many of the new techniques for character-centric entertainment made possible by the massively parallel compute available on the ATI Radeon HD 4800 GPU series. In our large-scale environment with thousands of highly detailed, intelligent characters, the Froblins (frog goblins), are concurrently simulated, animated and rendered entirely on the GPU. The individual character logic for each froblin creature is controlled via a complex shader - 3200 shader instructions for each froblin. We are utilizing the latest functionality available with the DirectX® 10.1 API, hardware tessellation, high fidelity rendering with 4X MSAA settings, at HD resolution with gamma-correct rendering, full HDR FP16 pipeline and advanced post-processing effects.

In this interactive environment, thousands of animated, intelligent characters are rendered from a variety of viewpoints ranging from extreme close-ups to far away "bird's eye" views of the entire system (over three thousands characters at the same time). The demo combines state-of-the-art parallel artificial intelligence computation for dynamic pathfinding and local avoidance on the GPU, massive crowd rendering with LOD management with high-end rendering capabilities such as GPU tessellation for high-quality close-ups and stable performance, terrain system, cascaded shadows for large-range environments, and an advanced global illumination system.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...ith-AI-calculation-on-the-GPU/Reviews/?page=3

AMD gives some high numbers when speaking of pathfinding: 10 million Polygons per second and the A.I. required a calculation power of 0.9 Teraflops - a Radeon HD 4850 delivers one Teraflop. 3,000 Froblins are en route collecting or eating, without bumping into or blocking each other.
To achieve this AMD uses the Eikonal solver, a formula that usually is used for calculation light rays. From their staging area the Froblins walk to a tower in the middle of the map and drop stones. AMD sets no great story by realism; the pile of stone isn't growing - in this demo the focus is on the A.I.

Any luck in asking around if you don't know already, if this technology will be pushed ahead further down the line? 290x has about 5,63TF, so a lot faster than the old 4850. 15-20k AI in a game sure sounds great for future games!

 

[VincentHanna]

Can't see it would ever happen.

Developers aren't going to program A.I that wouldn't run on an Nvidia card.

It's not like you can just untick 'a.i hardware calculation' in a game, like you could with a graphical effect that isn't supported by a rival GPU.

 

[Calin Banc]

AMD is not locking things down. I'm talking about making it open just like TressFX for instance.

 

[bru]

If that was back in 2008 then it is pretty safe to say it hasn't and probably isn't going anywhere.

 

[Gregster]

Coming soon?

 

[Orangey]

AC Unity

 

[Calin Banc]

Coming soon?

Nevertheless, is one of the few "next gen" features I'm really looking forward too; hopefully within a reasonable amount of time.