> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blosser, Jeremy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, August 05, 1999 4:32 PM
> To: GIMPS (E-mail)
> Subject: Mersenne: odd thought...
>
>
> I know that OpenGL supports double precision matrix
> transforms, and with
> todays super duper 3D accelerator cards, wouldn't it be
> possible to do an
> FFT via OpenGL and take advantage of the 3d hardware? Or am I
> completely off
> my rocker. (as usual) :)
>
> I was just thinking about how you can run a program on just
> about anything,
> like, oh, a floppy controller, or whatever. Heck I was playing around
> upgrading my Cisco 2900XL and noticed it uses a PPC603, (with
> a whopping 4MB
> of ram!) :)
>
> I guess the question really boils down to whether or not the
> transforms are
> handled by the hardware or not... (I dunno, graphics aren't
> my sort of thing
> baby).
>
Okay, so I took a little bit of time and looked into whether the current 3D
cards support hardware transforms and the answer is for the consumer market,
not quite yet...
Apparently, nVidia (makers of the TNT/TNT2) have the NV10 coming out "this
Fall" which has T&L (transform and lighting) support (basically geometry
acceleration). So, I suppose that when that comes out, someone can benchmark
how many flops it gets and then someone can try and write a client.
Now, of course, you have the intergraph cards and SGI boxes (boxen?) which
have super cool 3D accelerators in 'em which support geometry acceleration,
so I suppose it would be feasable to code something for these that'd just
plain rock... A good example would be the Intense3d Wildcat 4105 which does
matrix transforms and the specs say 3000MFLOPS... I wasn't able to figure
out what the precision is, but I'd imagine that it's double precision...
So, if anyone wants to donate either an NV10 or some other hardware
accelerated 3D card to me, I'll write the software for it. :)
-J
P.S. Interesting article GIMPS is mention in from Wired News --
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21136.html
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