Future of GPU / CPU rendering?

[notamondayfan]

I don't really pay much attention to hardware, but recently I have been looking into processors (see my home PC build thread), but I have been puzzled and about the future of processing, GPU rendering and CPU rendering.

 

As far as I was aware until a few days ago, you can currently render with CPUs in the traditional sense where the calulations are performed on the processor, or more recently, rendering with the GPU on graphics cards.

 

But having read up, from what I understand, the next generation of processors are incorporating GPU cores, hundreds, if not thousands of them. From a gaming point of view this looks interesting as it means you no longer need a dedicated graphics card, at-least for the lower end of the market, but what does it mean for computer graphics and rendering?

GPU rendering is all about speed, and taking full advantage of very powerful and very expensive graphic cards, but with issues of GPU RAM, the technology still doesn't seem advanced, or attainable for the likes of our industry. In my view people trying to jump on the GPU band wagon are spending too much cash on a technology not ready yet. I have a CUDA card at work, and it never gets used. VrayRT is too slow, and I find it a hindrance, rather than a useful tool.

 

But what about these new processors? Like I said before, I don't know too much about them, but to me, it looks like CPU rendering will still be the way forward in the future, and it will be only a matter of time before render engines take advantage of these processors.

 

Will GPU rendering be a passing fad? Will GPU renderers move to CPU, or will there be even more of a divide?

 

I could be totally wrong, I'm no expert, but it's interesting to see where we could be going in the future.

 

If anyone knows more, please contribute, as I would love to understand this a whole lot more!

 

Thanks, Deano

 

 

PS here is a bit of reading if anyone's interested....

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/06/30/amd-a8-3850-review/10

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/cpus-desktop/2011/07/04/amd-a8-3850-40093298/

http://www.geeks3d.com/20110103/intel-sandy-bridge-processors-cpugpu-launched/