Author: Jeff Andrews for Intel Software Network
“With the advent of multiple cores within a processor the need to create a parallel game engine has become more and more important. It is still possible to focus primarily on just the GPU and have a single threaded game engine, but the advantage of utilizing all the processors on a system, whether CPU or GPU, can give a much greater experience for the user. For example, by utilizing more CPU cores a game could increase the number of rigid body physics object for greater effects on screen, or developing smarter AI that gives it a more human like behavior.
1.1. Overview
The “Parallel Game Engine Framework” or engine is a multi-threaded game engine that is designed to scale to as many processors as are available within a platform. It does this by executing different functional blocks in parallel so that it can utilize all available processors. This is easier said than done as there are many pieces to a game engine that often interact with one another and can cause many threading errors because of that. The engine takes these scenarios into account and has mechanisms for getting proper synchronization of data without having to be bound by synchronization locks. The engine also has a method for executing data synchronization in parallel in order to keep serial execution time at a minimum.”
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