A few days ago I was talking about real-time 3D moving towards programmability and now Intel comes out with a more detailed report of their upcoming Larrabee technology. Basically Intel extending CPUs towards the GPU domain.

This is all very cool, but I don't see any mention on actual software technology. We know that Intel has been doing research on Ray Tracing, but the real issue for 3D in games is productivity. Not an easy problem because it involves tools and artists and programmers together.

With all this quality, productivity, predictions, etc, kind of topics floating around, recently, I've been using wikis, PowerPoint and Excel a lot more than compilers 8(

My employer has been involving me more and more with 3D technology development for the company. Very nice indeed !!
From time to time, I get involved with very interesting technology previews. What I see is not what I can report of. Also early preview of things don't normally tell the whole story. However, it seems that programmability is coming back in a big way.
This is somewhat obvious, considering how programmable shaders are getting constantly more powerful and pervasive. Also, with the PS3 almost going Cell-only, with nVidia releasing CUDA and with the academical world wishing for more GPGPU.

With great programmability comes great uncertainty: what's next ?  read more »