Warp engine

[CHHAS]

Would it be possible to utilize the warp engine in the G400 chips to do some form of Hidden Surface Removal ?

After all the Kyro raving, I remembered hearing something about the Warp Engine being programmable, and HSR would be a great feature.

[Randy Simons]

Might be possible, but it would be stooopid. The WARP engine is already used for triangle setup (iirc). Even if you could do some HSR with it, that's not what the WARP engine was made for and thus is most likely to be slow. AND your CPU needs to do the triangle setup again.


[This message has been edited by Randy Simons (edited 14 April 2001).]

[Indiana]

I don't really think it's possible, but I'm not so sure if it would be that stupid: Nowadays with the G4x0 most games are fillrate limited and not CPU-limited (using a CPU >600-800MHz).
So decreasing fillrate/gfx-mem-bandwidth usage with some sort of HSR might be worthwhile even if it did put some extra load on the CPU (that is too fast for the gfx-card anyway).

[DuRaNgO]

That's not a bad idea as HSR gives a better performance boost than T&L does or is that T&A?

[EvilDonnyboy]

That'd be cool. It could be the Matrox equivilant of the Detonator3 drivers. But matrox's driver team is too busy trying to implement exciting new ways to use Dual head

I'm using a SH card, so HSR would benifit me way more than some eDual Head II.

[Drizzt]

Randy, the Warp Engine is never been used for triangle setup.
The Warp Engine has never been used.

Well...probably it has been used in the TechDemo.



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Italian Guy, Bad English

D'ya want an Italian version?

[[GDI]Raptor]

As far as I know the Warp engine has never been used to anything, I think Matrox can rise preformance a little if they inplant HSR and T&L on their G400 series!

MAtrox driver developers shold use more time to see wath ther customers want! Now I don't men the "big" OEM vendors like IBM and DELL

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- [GDI]Raptor

[CHHAS]

I doubt it is powerful enough to do T&L, which is why I thought about HSR. Maybe it could do Dot-3 bumpmapping as well ...

[EvilDonnyboy]

wow. It does nothing? It could really have potential of doing... stuffs. Has anybody talked to actual matrox guyz about this? I would, but I'm not quite as knowledgable of matrox hardware as some of the ppl here.

[CHHAS]

Doesn't it do the EMBM ?

[Kruzin]

Of course the WARP engine does something.
If you want to know exactly what it does, sign up for the Matrox developers section on their web site, sign an NDA, and read the white papers

I recall a similar discussion taking place when T&L first hit the scene. Everone wanted WARP engine clocks dedicated to T&L.
It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now with HSR. Suffice it to say, the WARP engine IS being used, and there is not enough of it to be spead around to other functions.

[Randy Simons]

Hmm, Grzegorz Mazur claims that the WARP engine is used for triangle setup.

[This message has been edited by Randy Simons (edited 15 April 2001).]

[EvilDonnyboy]

Also according to Grzegorz, the G400 has 2 warp engines (used as triangle setup engines). If it has 2 triangle setup engines, why is the G400 so FPU hungry? I thought the explanation for G400's large FPU appetite was because of a Triangle Setup engine that wasn't 100% done in hardware.

[Ali]

It would be the stupidest thing I have ever heard if the warp engine didnt do anything.

Why use the transistors, and the possibility of faulty chips due to a part that wasnt used?

What about the extra cost?

The Warp engine has been around since the G200 at least. The G450 was a cheap card, so why would they leave it in if it didnt do anything?

I dont know what it does, I dont realy care, but Matrox have proven time and time again that they have excellent engineers. They wouldnt make something that wasnt used.

Ali

[2Whyzzi]

I'd be more likeley to hypothosise that the warp engine is used to add/multiply/provide/communicate/store (or something to that effect) calculations supplied to/from SSE/3DNow.

But hey, what do I know? (nothing, naturally)



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Abit BH6 r1.01
Celeron2-566 o/c to 850MHz+Slotket!!! 1.8v
256 Megs PC-133 Cas3
Matrox G400 SH OEM (not oc'd) rev=03h
Diamond Monster Sound MX400