We're looking for new writers to join us!

Software lags behind hardware

by: Chuck -
More On:
This article from the NY Times dovetails a bit with what John mentioned in his Intel post as it talks about the problems that developers are having with the new chips coming out.  The gist of the article is that software developers are no longer keeping up with the pace that hardware set.  For a while chip development was all around speed but then hit a wall when it became difficult to manage heat and increase speed at the same time.  The hardware folks then took a different tact and started looking at how to handle multiple tasks (threads) at the same time.  This works great but it's very difficult to write software for as you have to figure out when all the tasks start/stop so you know when to feed new data in.

Why is this important?  Well because all of the next gen systems have parallel processors which are a bit harder to program for.  If you're wondering why we are seeing so many next-gen game delays this is one of the big reasons as developers now have to rethink how they code their games.  I know I've talked about this in the past but it's nice to see a mainstream newspaper talk about the issue (and do a much better job at it)