Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 15:45:52 +0100 From: Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org> To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Most wanted Message-ID: <4049E420.3080609@energyhq.es.eu.org> In-Reply-To: <xzpn06uuldj.fsf@dwp.des.no> References: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0403011839470.3269-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <2EAEEFC4-6EEE-11D8-AE09-000A95DA58FE@jimz.net> <EABDE846-6EF2-11D8-AE09-000A95DA58FE@jimz.net> <20040305145853.3a365f60.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20040306005744.T38020@haldjas.folklore.ee> <20040305153505.74061868.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20040306144731.3449848a.j.schim@netmaniacs.nl> <xzpn06uuldj.fsf@dwp.des.no>
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This is a cryptographically signed message in MIME format. --------------ms000207020603090102020103 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote: > Joao Schim <j.schim@netmaniacs.nl> writes: > >>I can imagine there's still a lot of ASM programming involved in >>console computer games.. Atleast it still was a few years ago. > > > No, the PlayStation changed all that. There's a lot of hand-coded mips assembly code in PS games. The PSX didn't have a very powerful hardware, and needed a lot of tricks for games to look good. Some tricks were in the gfx area, most of them in the programming area. A very good example of this is Crash Bandicoot, which rendered most of the graphics as gouraud, letting enough free memory and bus cycles for the streaming music system. The same applies to PS2 games. To be able to use 5:1 audio the programmers at EA (I think they were the first to come up with the idea) found out they could use one of the VU coprocessors to process the audio, while doing 3d math with the other. There are a lot of interesting tricks game companies have found since the PS2 were released. The rise of quality in the games comes from getting more intimate knowledge of the underlying hardware and learning that in the PS2 world you have very small very fast caches that need to be constantly filled, as opposed to the PC world with slow buses and big memories. Most of that stuff is done in assembler. FWIW, mips assembler is a very nice ISA to work with. Although most PC games mostly rely on hardware these days, there's still place for the 90/10 rule, i.e. writing the critical inner loops in asm, or hand optimize your SSE/3dNow code. 3D hardware changed the way games are written, though, most programmers today woulnd't know how to init mode-x on their VGA cards even if they supported it :) To stay on topic, while I find assembly programing extremely funny, specially on the Amiga, for systems programming I think it's better to avoid it as much as you can. Current AMD and Intel space heaters can eat code fast enough that only critical parts really need to be hand optimized (kernel, libc, that kind of stuff). Cheers, -- Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org> http://www.energyhq.es.eu.org PGP Key: 0xDC8514F1 --------------ms000207020603090102020103 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" Content-Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIJmDCC BMgwggKwoAMCAQICAhYWMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAMHkxEDAOBgNVBAoTB1Jvb3QgQ0ExHjAc BgNVBAsTFWh0dHA6Ly93d3cuY2FjZXJ0Lm9yZzEiMCAGA1UEAxMZQ0EgQ2VydCBTaWduaW5n IEF1dGhvcml0eTEhMB8GCSqGSIb3DQEJARYSc3VwcG9ydEBjYWNlcnQub3JnMB4XDTA0MDMw MTE2MjcwMloXDTA1MDMwMTE2MjcwMlowRDEZMBcGA1UEAxMQQ0FjZXJ0IFVzZXIgQ2VydDEn MCUGCSqGSIb3DQEJARYYZmx5bm5AZW5lcmd5aHEuZXMuZXUub3JnMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEA07LSCTC1BRQJu+29UYTysclyU+Nlfnl6BL4PCsCCoThxOO6G 9JVkioylXRwMB2Gcanls6MIqMMxiZ7pT9RNgWp5pTtvn9/P/9Z7paigVW55I9dXPI4x24/Zr 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