Blender Underground

(2.48a) I read an article about the possibility to let calculations or search algorythms run on a graphic card and that the results come about as fast as if you're using a 2.5 GHz processor. I thought it would be nice if blender/indigo/yafray or whatever renderer you use would support this. It would save a big deal of render time. I'm not sure if this is already possible, and I can't explain how it is done in detail, I didn't understand the whole article.

Yeah, that would be a nice feature. A modern graphic card has more calculation power than the cpu, if you manage to run your program on the gpu. That's called GPGPU (General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit).
But for now it is too hard to run complex algorithms on the gpu, so only specialized algorithms will work here.

not quite welcome for me... i dont have a graphics CARD i just have a stupid on-board unit.. which sucks...

ah well

I didn't mean to render only on graphics card. I meant to use graphics card processor as an additional processor for quicker rendering. 3 are better than 2.

ah right.. so as an extra.. i get it.. that could work... do you know if there is a feature on Blender for Network Rendering?

How about this?

Raytracing up to TWO HUNDRED TIMES faster?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/13/caus ... ng-speeds/

cool.. but thats a while before that is implemented and its gonna be very expensive... and probably doesnt actually warrent a spend from me...

[EDIT]
Agreed, but am I missing something? Is it OpenGL that allows Game code to rip through a GPU? Is it not possible to use say,

http://www.hwmania.org/forum/schede-vid ... 768mb.html

to send instructions for Indigo, and other unbiased renderers, through the GPU? What's the difference in instructions?

[/EDIT]

"The second generation technology should be unleashed sometime in mid-2010, while the CausticOne card will get its official announcement on April 23 of this year."

My birthday!