GDC Report: Threading for Performance tutorial

By Josh Bancroft (Intel) (61 posts) on March 7, 2007 at 6:06 pm

Yesterday, day 2 of GDC, I sat in on the day long "Threading for Performance" tutorial put on by Paul Lindberg and Brad Werth of Intel.

They went over the details needed of taking a completely "serialized" application, where everything has to wait for the thing before it to complete before it can happen, and move by steps to a threaded, parallel, multicore-ready application. There were a couple dozen quad core "Core 2 Extreme" lab systems around the room, but the place was packed all day, so no one really got to have a system to themselves.

The labs used the "Destroy the Castle" demo from last year's GDC, which is supposed to be available for download on the Intel Software Network site, but I couldn't find it after a cursory browse, and it wasn't showing up in the search (oops!). We need to fix that, to make the download more accessible and easy to find, because from the feeling in the room, lots of the developers there are going to want to get their hands on it, and look at how it went from about 40 frames per second to almost 300 frames per second by optimizing the app for multicore systems.

I'll try to track down a link to the demo files and the tutorial materials, and get it placed somewhere more prominent. If you go looking for it, and can't find it, let me know (also, if you DO find it, please tell me, so I can at least post a link).

Categories: Gaming, Multicore

Comments (5) Comments RSS Feed

By Carlos on March 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I have been looking for a while in your websites and I have been unable to find the Destroy The Castle demo and project. I think that you said http://www.intel.com/software but I can't find it there.
Thanks.

By Jon on March 9th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I am also looking for the destory the castle sample code they promised us. They definately said http://www.intel.com/software/

By Bradley Werth on March 12th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Destroy the Castle source is available at:

http://www3.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/337398.htm

Apologies to all for the confusion.

By Intel® Software Network Blogs » Blog Archive » Download the “Destroy the Castle” Demo Code from GDC on March 13th, 2007 at 10:16 am
[...] those that were at the “Threading for Performance” all day tutorial session that Intel put on at GDC last week, this will look very familiar (and there were a lot of you!). [...]

By Download the “Destroy the Castle” Demo Code from GDC » TinyScreenfuls.com on March 13th, 2007 at 10:17 am
[...] those that were at the “Threading for Performance” all day tutorial session that Intel put on at GDC last week, this will look very familiar (and there were a lot of you!). [...]


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