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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Can graphics keep evolving? How? For how long?

haxxiy said:
Pemalite said:

"Electronic circuits" still have significant room to exponentially grow and become more complex... And thus will enable new rendering paradigms.
TSMC 3nm is not really using 3nm sized transistors, it's an advertising term to make themselves look cool and isn't representational of any geometric feature sized of the chips themselves.
In-fact the transistors are actually much much much much larger, so we are a long way from reaching peak-silicon when Quantum Tunneling becomes a physical limitation.

Everyone and their mother in the industry knows there are at best a handful of full nodes left and then they are moving on to vertical circuit stacking. This isn't exactly a secret or an opinion:

Regardless of TSMC's shenanigans, ITRS's nomenclature has never referred to the physical size of transistors. Historically it was half of the gate pitch which was a close approximation for the smallest feature size of a MOSFET.

That hasn't been the case for a long time, however, as logic scales better than the rest of the circuit:

TSMC's 3 nm transistors have logic gates of ~ 15 nm and within them transistors with silicon fins as small as 7 nm wide, which is pretty close to electron mobility collapse from quantum tunneling.

Even using theoretical 2D materials and 1 nm transistors as wide as a single molecule isn't going to make matters much better (just ~ 5 times denser than TSMC's N5).

Everyone is trying to find smarter solutions for computing problems or trying to find quantum algorithms that actually work (hint: they won't since it's very very very likely that P =/= NP) because they know brute forcing with MOSFETs isn't going to cut the mustard for much longer.

You should read my post properly as I never stated anything to the contrary.
"Room to exponentially grow" means larger chips, chiplets, stacking and/or shrinks enabled by multi-patterning or new materials. Aka. All of the above.

Research is being done to take things down to potentially (Research is ongoing, but been stupidly promising) 1nm geometrically from the roughly 20nm~ we have today via molybdenum disulfide and single-walled carbon nanotubes, the transistor gate length can potentially be reduced to a size of 1 nanometer, which seems to sidestep a portion of the quantum tunneling issue.

My point is, chip fabrication still has definitely got years of life/improvement left in it, TSMC has plans well into the 2030's.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsmc-charts-a-course-to-trillion-transistor-chips-eyes-monolithic-chips-with-200-billion-transistors-built-on-1nm-node

But you are right about TSMC's naming, but my point still remains and is factual that it's not actually representative of geometric feature size of a chip.

And chip stacking is a natural progression, once NAND hit a wall in shrinkage's... As NAND becomes less reliable the smaller you go, manufacturers started stacking.



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Yes.
Eventually, there will be full shift to volumetric representations of 3D worlds (as opposed to current polygon based), which will also bring consistent physics based worlds.



HoloDust said:

Yes.
Eventually, there will be full shift to volumetric representations of 3D worlds (as opposed to current polygon based), which will also bring consistent physics based worlds.

The contruction of a simulation. Add in Ai with physics based worlds and we'll have to seriously sit down and cosider the ethical implications. I wouldn't be surprised if we were in a video game and this is how new universes are born. 



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Deus Ex (2000) - a game that pushes the boundaries of what the video game medium is capable of to a degree unmatched to this very day.

m0ney said:

I don't care about grafffix

Must be great to be able to stare at a black screen and enjoy it playing on it. 😉 



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Graphics can keep evolving.

20 years ago no one would have thought Ray tracing, 4K/8K, etc would be a thing.

I'm sure there will be more technologies that will be introduced as time goes by that havent been revealed yet.



The older I've gotten, the less I've become impressed purely by graphics. I'm more amazed by visually creative art styles rather than the chase of photorealism. No Rest for the Wicked and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess being great examples of being insanely beautiful to look at, but due to the art style the developers went for.

I'm sure there's still ways graphics can continually evolve going forward, just not in anywhere near as big of jumps as we've had historically. Like the biggest next gen feature we've had this gen is the inclusion of SSD's rather than a generational visual leap.



G2ThaUNiT said:

The older I've gotten, the less I've become impressed purely by graphics. I'm more amazed by visually creative art styles rather than the chase of photorealism. No Rest for the Wicked and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess being great examples of being insanely beautiful to look at, but due to the art style the developers went for.

I'm sure there's still ways graphics can continually evolve going forward, just not in anywhere near as big of jumps as we've had historically. Like the biggest next gen feature we've had this gen is the inclusion of SSD's rather than a generational visual leap.

Yep, visual design and art direction is the way to go for me too.

I just recently finished Ratchet and Clank (2016) that I played on my PS5 and was just blown away at the sheer size and design.



Absolutely, there are multiple solutions and strategies to implement and explore. One on the horizon is a merging of concepts we've already seen in some forms, where local hardware limitations will be offset by streaming assets into bare-bones rendered environments and worlds (I think Star Engine implements a variant of this). Hybrid solutions of several kinds will show up, designed to offload the strain from components via software and other venues. We're already seeing a lot of this happening right now, up-scaling tech is becoming more and more sophisticated, as well as easier to run. The combination of software wizardry, more agile display tech, and the continued development of purpose-built components with help from above-mentioned streaming, will see us climb to levels of visuals we can't imagine. I've heard this argument repeated since the PS1 era, at least. You can only experience visual quality and design in the now, but looking back and seeing how far we've gone always amazes me. I remember Gran Turismo 3 shocking me with its beauty and tech on release, I had a hard time imagining where we'd go from there.

Good examples of "wizardry" is how GG did with the engine for the "Horizon" games on PS (and PC) - it only renders what the player character sees at any given time, taking a tremendous load off the components and allowing incredible visual quality on even sub-par hardware.

Another crazy phenomenon is the realistic lighting and blurring mods for Cyberpunk 2077, it really makes an insane impact. Lighting, texturing, and motion still has miles to go to be anywhere near photo-realistic.



G2ThaUNiT said:

The older I've gotten, the less I've become impressed purely by graphics. I'm more amazed by visually creative art styles rather than the chase of photorealism. No Rest for the Wicked and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess being great examples of being insanely beautiful to look at, but due to the art style the developers went for.

I'm sure there's still ways graphics can continually evolve going forward, just not in anywhere near as big of jumps as we've had historically. Like the biggest next gen feature we've had this gen is the inclusion of SSD's rather than a generational visual leap.

Same. Dreamcast is about the last time realism blew me away. I was impressed with the early screens of PG3 but I was more interested in VF5 with style or early Wii hype.  Now I just prefer a more stylized and interesting art direction.



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