Intel making easier the lives of developers, enters TSX

**karamazovmm** · September 20, 2012, 12:16 PM

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6290/m...ion-extensions

Lovely job from intel, this is going to solve a ot of problems regarding sync when doing multithreaded apps.

**snuggans** · September 20, 2012, 12:48 PM

i am curious of the implications this will have on PC game performance (and whether it will affect console games at all since they use IBM CPUs) and how AMD will respond.

**Bolkonsky** · September 20, 2012, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by snuggans

i am curious of the implications this will have on PC game performance (and whether it will affect console games at all since they use IBM CPUs) and how AMD will respond.

If I'm reading this write (which I may not be), little to none. Simply put, engines will not utilize it, no consoles use Intel processors and no game with a big enough budget to make a new engine that actually needs this kind of support will ever be PC exclusive.

This will be good for stuff like encoding, handling large files, doing long and huge tasks in the background of applications, etc.

**snuggans** · September 20, 2012, 06:26 PM

i'm obviously not a programmer so i have no idea if what i'm asking is nonsense, but seeing as how C/C++ does use locks, wouldn't game developers be able to link to a TSX-enabled library like it says in the article? (except the word 'game' isn't used)

**Bolkonsky** · September 20, 2012, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by snuggans

i'm obviously not a programmer so i have no idea if what i'm asking is nonsense, but seeing as how C/C++ does use locks, wouldn't game developers be able to link to a TSX-enabled library like it says in the article? (except the word 'game' isn't used)

Yes but who is going to rewrite a game engine that can't then be used on game consoles?

**Crazyeyesreaper** · September 20, 2012, 07:33 PM

it will still work Bolk

PC uses SSE you dont see that on IBM equipped Xbox or PS3 lol yet almost every PC game engine makes use of SSE SSE2 etc. The problem is it does NOTHING to help older games or current titles. thats the problem.

**karamazovmm** · September 20, 2012, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

it will still work Bolk

PC uses SSE you dont see that on IBM equipped Xbox or PS3 lol yet almost every PC game engine makes use of SSE SSE2 etc. The problem is it does NOTHING to help older games or current titles. thats the problem.

only if you modify your current engine. and only if you have the necessary ISA, i.e. haswell and up

**Bolkonsky** · September 21, 2012, 06:25 PM

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

it will still work Bolk

PC uses SSE you dont see that on IBM equipped Xbox or PS3 lol yet almost every PC game engine makes use of SSE SSE2 etc. The problem is it does NOTHING to help older games or current titles. thats the problem.

Well yeah it will work, I'm not challenging that. I just don't think people will take the time they need to make it work well for what, 10-15% off their customers, if that? Especially when they already have passable tech. Fact of the matter is, people don't utilize PC technology.