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Comment by rwz | Hacker News Reader

I think the discrete GPUs as a concept is coming to an end. Computer graphics is shifting more and more to using local AI-like things like DLSS that allows to hard-render simpler geometry and shadows and then apply AI-realism filters in real-time.

It's harder and harder to justify gaming PCs having separate pools of GPU-only memory and "everything else" RAM.

I think unified memory is the obvious next step for personal computing and vendors will be coming up with solutions that enable more modular approach to building enthusiast grade upgradable personal computers.

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How would DLSS, which runs on GPU hardware — and specifically, as I understand it, GPU hardware that accelerates AI inference — eliminate the GPU?

And if a system is intended to be modular and upgradable, what would combining the GPU and CPU into a single module contribute to this goal?

Now an architecture that separates the memory controller from the CPU and gives pluggable CPUs and GPUs (and storage and network controllers, for that matter) equal access to a single pool of RAM in a secure and high-performance way, that would certainly be interesting, and not only or even primarily for gaming.

DLSS does not require any specific packaging configuration. There's no reason DLSS can't run on DGX Spark or GPU cores of the Apple's M-chips aside from specific Nvidia software optimizations that can surely be worked out if needed.

I imagine the PCs for the future would maybe have motherboard with two sockets: a normal CPU one and a GPU one, both having access to some high bandwidth unified memory that.

Right now the unified memory needs to be pretty much soldered super close to the chip to ensure the bandwidth and energy efficiency, but hopefully there will be some solution to circumvent this limitation in the future.

Putting CPU and GPU cores into the same physical die works for your average consumer machines, but hardcore professionals or enthusiasts would always strive for more custom configurations than existing packages can provide, like more GPU cores.

So future PC go back to having GPU on motherboard ?

I think so, yeah. Clearly having separate RAM and GPU memory where memory becoming the main productivity bottle neck is not practical or sustainable.

DLSS still needs discrete hardware to do that (and keeps requiring new hardware on each generation). Not to mention the types of RAM are not the same and have entirely different tradeoffs - using GDDR for a CPU would tank performance due to an order of magnitude worse latency, using DDR for a GPU would make games a slideshow due to an order of magnitude worse bandwidth. And you'd have to redesign the entire concept of how CPUs and motherboards work to get there, while making AMD and NVIDIA agree to have their chips be behest to the bridges of shitty motherboard and consumer RAM manufacturers even more than they already are.

Integrated systems have come a long way for highly optimized mobile and laptops designs with specific hardware in mind. But even if everything went perfectly - DLSS 5 on a 5090 halves the frame rate and requires a 5090. And it can only do a single style - gritty, high contrast lighting photorealism.

In 10 years will new GPUs primarily be AIPUs? Sure, probably, but they'll still be discrete and they'll still have significant raster and ray tracing pipelines to provide the basis of rendering.

Then again, maybe AGI will come and hardware will fundamentally revolutionize overnight.

> DLSS 5 on a 5090 halves the frame rate and requires a 5090. And it can only do a single style - gritty, high contrast lighting photorealism.

The technology is very new and currently in its infancy. I do believe it's the future of computer graphics though, where instead of doing "real" photorealistic geometry and lighting, software can render a very simplified scene and have a good enough photo-realistic filter applied to it so that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Obviously, I believe it'll be flexible enough to do things other than photo-realism in the future.

> In 10 years will new GPUs primarily be AIPUs? Sure, probably, but they'll still be discrete and they'll still have significant raster and ray tracing pipelines to provide the basis of rendering.

I think we have different definitions of "discrete" here. In my mind AIPUs are the opposite of discrete. I might be wrong here, but I always interpreted this term as a standalone GPU unit with its own onboard memory — a thing that currently fits into a PCIE slot.

I guess I understood "on its way out" to be a shorter timeframe than you intended, sorry!

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