End of "graphics card era"?

[RCHeliguy]

Cloud computing is very real and has dramatically reduced the power of my development system. I used to have to run one or more virtual machines to get work done. I haven't had to spin up a virtual machine in years.

For my needs the video throughput is excellent, but I don't use it for VR.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Consoles killing PC gaming has been threatened for decades. As long as there's popular content exclusively on the PC platform it's not going anywhere, regardless of hardware.

How many modern popular PC exlusive titles are there? There is a lot of PS exlusives though.
And Switch exists just because of exclusive. I don't see that with PC. May be I am just not playing these games.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Cloud computing is very real and has dramatically reduced the power of my development system. I used to have to run one or more virtual machines to get work done. I haven't had to spin up a virtual machine in years.

For my needs the video throughput is excellent, but I don't use it for VR.

Indeed - and the whole idea has been around for decades; point was it hasn't completely replaced local processing, just added another option.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've only have one game console that was mine. It was an Atari 2600.

My ex had a Nintendo and my kids had Play stations and X boxes. I rarely touched them. I'd try out "new things" like the Kinect. That was about it. I pretty well got gaming out of my system early and if it wasn't for VR I still wouldn't be playing video games.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

How many entetprises are still using local data centers, everyone has moved to cloud.
And everyone is aggresively pushing out desktop apps in favor of web client and cloud based service.
Even MS Office is getting killed by Google Doc/SpreadSheet.
With games it's just matter of right technologies to solve latency issue, after that. bye bye local computing.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I spend a lot of time in the Dynamics 365 space and my customers are pretty much all moving to the cloud. But then there are things like BYOD to give you a local database to play with because sometimes you still need a local database to slice and dice. I'm betting that will all end up in SQL Azure soon.

 

[Miguel Batista]

How many modern popular PC exlusive titles are there? There is a lot of PS exlusives though.
And Switch exists just because of exclusive. I don't see that with PC. May be I am just not playing these games.

Of the top of my head? All total war titles, paradox titles, warning titles... so, so many...

Also, regarding console hardware, what you said about consoles having an average due to locked hardware, since dx11 it has not been the case. You look at the hardware on an Xbox 1X and you can get similar 4k performance on a similar spec PC for about the same price (a bit more expensive now iirc mostly due to ram prices still being a tad too high). You also get a better CPU and hdd in the deal. And consoles are it cheaper. When GT5 cane out I was going to buy a PS3 just to play it. Sadly, my laptop at the time gave up the ghost and I needed one for university so the choice was between a laptop and a PS3 which I would only use for gaming. My decision was clear. I had to game on my new laptop which wasn't too bad but it was "cheaper" than a PS3 because you can't do anything else but gaming on it. Consoles will not be the death of pc gaming and funily enough, mobile is eating more into the console market than into the pc market. Probably because the "ease of play" argument is even stronger and mobile is so strong in capacity nowadays that you can have a decent gaming experience on the go. I used to have a PSP emulator on my phone and played God of war there fine. Ridiculous to think about this 10 years ago but there we are.

As far as cloud computing goes, I see it as an addition more than an over right replacement since getting hit end computing capabilities are cheap as hell especially with access to cuda development tools. When I was working at ESA I had to spec a computer to run an ocean simulation and it was faster to run it on that machine (5960X eight core, 128GB of ram and maxwell titan X with a 1 TB microsoft nvme SSD connected by PCI-e) and it was faster than using the computer array I had access to thanks to the bigger number of CUDA cores compared to the measly 90 something CPU cores in the array. Sure you can't CUDA your way out of everything but your desktop nowadays has more computing power than a super computer from the early 2000s. And that is just in pure teraflops. When you look at functions that CUDA can do really well, that difference widens simply because you have about 3000 processors that each can do a single instruction (limited by cache size and memory access speed) instead of the 600 cores you could use in something like the terra computer in Japan back in 04.

So yeah, cloud computing is a complement rather than a replacement simply due to the low cost of computational power. Storage solutions are another point. I easily have more than enough capacity to store everything I need on my 3TB SSD and literally use cloud as backup and data transfer. Again cloud storage didn't replace storage it just complemented it.

So yeah, pc market is fine for now and there will always be demand for it I think. Laptops might replace desktops though. The owe those little critters come equipped with nowadays is astonishing. Since Nvidia dropped the m on the 980 in laptops we now get desktop grade performance out of them crazy...

 

[Richard Dastardly]

How many entetprises are still using local data centers, everyone has moved to cloud.
And everyone is aggresively pushing out desktop apps in favor of web client and cloud based service.
Even MS Office is getting killed by Google Doc/SpreadSheet.
With games it's just matter of right technologies to solve latency issue, after that. bye bye local computing.

And I'll refer you to 90s thin clients, the version of NT that acted as a multihead server, etc. I'll also refer you to mainframes and terminals, and remote X-windows, because none of these are new concepts at all. We're not talking about data centres either, where the data centre is is irrelevant - we're talking about local processing vs remote, and it doesn't always make sense to remote process. Office documents are trivial applications & ripe for remote technology - real-time interactive number crunching is not always as receptive.

"Right technologies to solve latency issues" - when you can subvert the speed of light, then we'll talk there is a barrier called physics. Ping times across the atlantic are down to 100-150ms these days thanks to better processing in routers & more fibre under the sea, but again there are hard limits.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've written code that runs on dumb terminals and X Windows terminals, but they were usually local to a mainframe. Both make perfect sense for some things, but they were just displays. What we are doing now with Cloud computing is unloading processing and software administration and storage to some extent so that we can access it on smart devices whether they be a mobile phone, tablet or PC. This can take care of some at least relatively real time applications.

"Right technologies to solve latency issues" - when you can subvert the speed of light, then we'll talk there is a barrier called physics. Ping times across the atlantic are down to 100-150ms these days thanks to better processing in routers & more fibre under the sea, but again there are hard limits.

Be careful here. Have you ever heard of quantum entanglement? Sounds theoretical, right? Don't be too sure. I was talking with a network guy who was working on data transfer over quantum entangled particles. It's coming and it's all about physics. The entangled particles move synchronously seemingly unaffected by distance. So about those "hard limits", maybe they aren't completely etched in stone. It's not here yet, but it was 4 years since I had my conversation with the guy working on this. At the time they were just starting to get it to work, but it's still in its infancy and I'm not suggesting we will see this in the immediate future.

Hey, would you look at that! This was timely. I completely missed this. Looks like progress is being made! This is exciting even though what they are using it for is security and not for latency.
https://phys.org/news/2018-12-networking-quantum.html

 

[Deleted member 197115]

And I'll refer you to 90s thin clients, the version of NT that acted as a multihead server, etc. I'll also refer you to mainframes and terminals, and remote X-windows, because none of these are new concepts at all. We're not talking about data centres either, where the data centre is is irrelevant - we're talking about local processing vs remote, and it doesn't always make sense to remote process. Office documents are trivial applications & ripe for remote technology - real-time interactive number crunching is not always as receptive.

"Right technologies to solve latency issues" - when you can subvert the speed of light, then we'll talk there is a barrier called physics. Ping times across the atlantic are down to 100-150ms these days thanks to better processing in routers & more fibre under the sea, but again there are hard limits.

Time is changing, why do you need local processing if all your data and application itself are on the cloud. All you need is just rendering terminal. All software companies keep shrinking and desupporting desktop apps, only a complete outsider to software industry cannot see it.
Although I do remember all our team chuckling at the boss in 2000 when he said our desktop software will be running on the web.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Quantum entanglement would indeed subvert the speed of light but come back to me when it's packaged for consumers - when latency is the same to a remote process as a local one, then yes it really doesn't matter where it is.

There are other things I've used which I'm happy are remote services, like Autodesk's CfD processing - having things like that seamlessly integrated into whatever you're using is *great*. I'm generally in favour of offloading services, mostly because of not having to mess around integrating multiple platforms, but I also recognise that there are some things which aren't suitable without major changes in tech. And why would I need to run a racing sim on my tablet?

Cloud gaming might one day see the end of consoles, that's for sure. Why do PC gamers have gaming PCs instead of consoles *now* though? what's going to change there?

Can I also point out that google office apps run in your local browser? browsers are a local platform all of their own.

 

[RCHeliguy]

You specifically said to talk to you when you find a way to get around these "hard limits", so I did. Now you change the target. Funny. They claim they can now easily and cheaply create quantum entangled pairs, so we may start to see commercial applications and then get to the masses which is the "quantum internet" they mention below.

"With no complex steps to route the entanglement to different users, the network is versatile, cheap and reliable."​

"We plan to build even bigger networks with many more users, with the goal to create a versatile foundation for building a quantum internet."​

 

[Richard Dastardly]

You specifically said to talk to you when you find a way to get around these "hard limits", so I did. Now you change the target. Funny. They claim they can now easily and cheaply create quantum entangled pairs, so we may start to see commercial applications and then get to the masses which is the "quantum internet" they mention below.

"With no complex steps to route the entanglement to different users, the network is versatile, cheap and reliable."​

"We plan to build even bigger networks with many more users, with the goal to create a versatile foundation for building a quantum internet."​

Oh come on, there's a vast difference between experimental and easily commercially deployable ( especially consumer-level ) which is what we're talking about here; remote rendering has been around for decades and yet the discussion is still about future consumer deployment ( with respect to replacing local GPUs ). There's even existing consumer services like PS Now and we're still talking about the future. I did kinda assume any discussion is about what's relevant to topic.

I've had an interesting chat with a friend who's company uses google cloud services for remote rendering - they're very small & the op-cost of running local iron is probably more for them than the rather extortionate cost of their cluster, but they do admit if they scaled their operation up it'd probably be worth running their own servers & buying remote time when they needed it. Economics of all this are pretty interesting.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The real reasons that many companies are going to the cloud are the following:

1. Capital Expenses: Local servers and software are capital expenses which has a huge trickle down. The ratio of capital expenses to revenue can cause investors to take control from a company. Service costs can scale up and scale down and are spread out. CFO's like that so they push for the cloud.

2. Upgrade Expenses: Large Enterprises sometimes incur HUGE expenses when upgrading between different versions of software. Because of this they will sometimes use software that is many generations behind putting this off as long as possible. With cloud services the software upgrades happen behind the scenes.

3. Liability: Cloud services can guarantee up time, backups and security which limits liability. Liability can also be a big deal.

The issue with Capital expenses and upgrade expenses is that they can sometimes be forced on you in a year when you have no capital budgeted for them and they tend to be very expensive. So they impact the overall profitability of your company. With companies so focused on profitability on a quarter by quarter basis, having monthly service charges become a much safer bet.

You will notice that none of this is focused on overall cost, but rather like paying insurance to know you won't suddenly have to shell out a chunk to upgrade a fleet of servers, or to consultants to deal with a large software upgrade.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Somewhat relevant to the consoles discussion.
New PS5 from Sony
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5-first-details-backwards-compatible-ssds-psvr-s/1100-6466281/

 

[Deleted member 197115]

It's getting serious
Microsoft And Sony Announce Partnership For Gaming And Cloud Services

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've heard they can handle decent frame rates for HD. More coming.

 

[T_rac3]

It's getting serious
Microsoft And Sony Announce Partnership For Gaming And Cloud Services

I really, really don't like this. I know it is hard to buy some good hardware and after you bought it very soon it is obsolete and you must buy another one, but it is mine. I know, my mentality is also a little "obsolete", but I don't like either Steam. I loved the CD/DVD era. What give me this online library? Nothing. Just rip from me the joy of unpacking a new game. The smell of new from the user manual. I can't even start a game if the servers are down. Very very improbable ... but still. In a fraction of second I can remain without my library and his content. Then, I will search for my old DVD, put it in my comp and play a 10 years game.
Same for this cloud gaming

 

[Kenny Paton]

I really, really don't like this.

I sort of agree, I don't mind digital, although I do remain fond of physical media, (witness my ever expanding cd collection) I worry about this concept of a live service where the consumer is an easy target for monetisation and has almost no control over his purchases.
On the plus side I'll probably be gaga before it's fully implemented.

 

[T_rac3]

I worry about this concept of a live service where the consumer is an easy target for monetisation and has almost no control over his purchases

This