R580 Architecture Interview
The gang at Beyond3D have formulated a long list of technical questions regarding ATI's new R580 architecture and have published their findings. Receiving input from both Eric Demers of the Desktop Graphics Engineering group and Richard Huddy from ISV relations, there is a suprising level of detail shared throughout the discussion. If the finer details of GPU architecture get your blood going, this R580-based article certainly warrants your attention.
Right now, they seem to balance at 1:1 (TEX:ROP), but the trend is towards lowering ROPs, in general. The reality is that shading per pixel is increasing, which usually means many ALUs and many textures per pixel, as well as many cycles per pixel. Since we need only 1 ROP per cycle per pixel, effectively, the ROP throughput requirement is going down on new apps.
