 PowerThreads
Increases the Performance of 3Dlabs Accelerators
3Dlabs' PowerThreads driver is a high-performance OpenGL ICD that employs
advanced processing and optimization techniques to extract the maximum OpenGL
throughput from a combination of a host CPU, or CPUs, and a workstation-class
graphics accelerator. PowerThreads is available exclusively on 3Dlabs Oxygen
cards.
When driving an entry-level graphics accelerator with no on-board
geometry processing, the PowerThreads drivers use Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) to
accelerate geometry and lighting calculations on Windows workstations equipped
with Pentium III processors. Performance benefits from the SSE optimizations for geometry
and lighting limited applications range up to 100%. Additionally, 3Dlabs' proven
multi-threaded driver technology incorporated into PowerThreads SSE automatically
distributes the geometry and lighting calculations across multiple CPUs for even faster
OpenGL performance. A second CPU can boost performance by up to an additional 60%.
When driving a graphics accelerator with an on-board
GLINT
Gamma hardware geometry and lighting processor, PowerThreads SSE performs real-time
load balancing between the Gamma and the host CPUs for a dynamically balanced workload
distribution for optimal application performance. Due to load balancing, the combination
of hardware and CPU processing power is additive and always provides superior performance
when compared to CPUs alone. In addition, offloading the geometry load to a hardware
processor frees CPU cycles - resulting in faster application performance.
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