I hab da Idea..

[wtfpurepwned]

Seeing how todays games only allow a maximum of 2 threads executing in parallel, running a quad core would result in 2 core sitting idle. Now for anyone who cares and knows, I was wondering if Aion will be utilizing, and I doubt it, all four cores?

But yea, that's probably not going to be the case. Which means all your going to need to run 2 instances of Aion, is 1 quad core.

[Shade]

I doubt it'll utilise four cores. Most likely just two, and be built around D9. That's my guess anyway. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[Casket]

We won't be seeing to many games that take use of Quadcore for a little while.

[Celestin]

Tell you what, you draft up a proposal on how we can accomplish this and we'll give it some consideration. Does that sound fair?

Onto the next point. How many people actually own a quad core? Very, very few. But a lot of people own dual and single core processors. So why devote resources and money to satisfy very few people when you can devote the same resources to perfect your game running on single and dual cores and satisfy a lot of people? Just doesn't make sense does it?

Also, those cores aren't going to waste. They are handling other background applications. This lets the cores that your computer has assigned to handle your game, well, handle your game without having to worry about handling requests from other threads. This is a good thing. Trust me, I should know.

-- Edit

You might want to brush up on your computer knowledge. You have, to put it lightly, a few mistakes in your post. I'm not even entirely certain what you're trying to say in your second paragraph.

[wtfpurepwned]

Hi Celestin. How about no? =p This was an idea and nothing more. And about your point, I'm aware that most people don't own quad cores nor do they need it for current games. I also never said the cores were going to waste, now I do think they would benefit you IF your going to run 2 game simultaneously.

I missed your edit reading it the first time =\

"You might want to brush up on your computer knowledge. You have, to put it lightly, a few mistakes in your post. I'm not even entirely certain what you're trying to say in your second paragraph."

I'm not computer expert so don't expect much. As for my last paragraph, you can just ignore it if it doesn't make any sense.

[Celestin]

Originally Posted by wtfpurepwned

Hi Celestin. How about no? =p This was an idea and nothing more. And about your point, I'm aware that most people don't own quad cores nor do they need it for current games. I also never said the cores were going to waste, now I do think they would benefit you IF your going to run 2 game simultaneously.

If all you wanted were hard fast answers, you should've said so. As for me, well, I don't believe in them. I want you to understand, and more importantly, I want you to think.

Also, while I doubt having four cores will hurt your running two instances of the game simultaneously, it's not necessary due to the genius of many brilliant men. How is this possible? Interleaving and pipelining. There's your hard fast answer.

[Howling]

Actually, Microsoft and Intel have just plunged $millions into the development of threading technology - basically to make it easier, and thus cheaper for software devs, to support multi-threading.
I doubt very much that Aion will ever see Quad cores being utilised - simply because there is no need for it to use 4 cores. Though, I would imagine, within the year we will be seeing many new applications of multi-threading - probably not within the gaming world though.

[Angelcrazy]

tbh, I doubt it will be utilising the quad core at this stage.

[Yakuzan]

If Aion doesn't I will, I usually run Winamp and other applications while playing games so my Quad-core is used for other stuff while playing.

[Dez]

I has Quad Core, and i'm happy nevertheless. ^^

[wtfpurepwned]

Originally Posted by Celestin

If all you wanted were hard fast answers, you should've said so. As for me, well, I don't believe in them. I want you to understand, and more importantly, I want you to think.

Also, while I doubt having four cores will hurt your running two instances of the game simultaneously, it's not necessary due to the genius of many brilliant men. How is this possible? Interleaving and pipelining. There's your hard fast answer.

Ahh I see... It wasn't apparent to me, at first, that you were trying to actually help me understand by giving me the easy and long answer. Now you mentioned Interleaving and pipelining, I'm kinda curious as to what they are. Care to enlighten me?

[Celestin]

Pipelining is a method to maximize thoroughput of instructions which in turn makes your computer "work faster." The idea is simple. Split a bunch of instructions into smaller instructions, but when you run them, stagger them by a clock cycle ( or longer depending on dependencies and traps ) and run the smaller instructions in parallel. This is possible because the smaller instructions are designed to use different parts of the CPU so you never run into a structural dependency ( two instructions try to use the same part of the CPU at the same time, which is impossible ). Another way to think of this is maximizing the usage of the components of your CPU ( if you only processed one instruction at a time, only one part of the CPU is needed at a time to process a part of the instruction, wasting the rest of the CPU ).

This is analogous to doing multiple loads of laundry. To finish one load of laundry, you need to wash, dry, fold and put the clothes away. You have a washing machine, a drying machine and a friend to help you fold and put the clothes away. How do you do all your loads of laundry in the least amount of time? Easy. On the first cycle, you put one load into the washing machine. On the second cycle, you take the load out and put it into the drying machine while putting a new load into the washing machine. Just keep running along this basic idea and you'll have done pipelining.

This is a very simple explanation. In truth, there's a lot more to understand and it's very important part of modern computing.

Interleaving is simply running multiple threads through the CPU at once by taking advantage of pipelining. Threads are just abstraction for multiple related instructions. A program can have multiple threads ( one for displaying video, one for playing sound, etc ). So instead of only running one thread at a time, you run multiple threads at a time because instructions in a pipelined CPU are run in parallel, but slightly staggered. So on cycle 1, you run an instruction from thread A, but on cycle 2, you don't necessarily have to run an instruction from thread A, you can run an instruction from thread B. Modern computers are so fast that this switching between threads appears to us, the end user, as seamless. This is how you can watch a movie in real time, because if you think about it, watching a movie requires decoding video and audio at the same time. This is also why you don't need two CPUs to run two games. One CPU is enough given you have enough cycles.

[wtfpurepwned]

Thanks for the detailed explanation on how instructions work with CPU's. I've always known the basic idea of how a CPU processed it's instructions but never got down to the nittygritty stuff.