On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 04:31:45PM +0100, Benjamin Thaut wrote: > Am 08.01.2013 16:25, schrieb H. S. Teoh: [...] > >Game engines, OTOH, are a step away from hard real-time applications, > >where pause-the-world GCs are unacceptable. While it isn't fatal for > >a game engine to pause every now and then, it is very noticeable, and > >detrimental to the players' experience, so game devs generally shy > >away from anything that needs to pause the world. For real-time apps, > >though, it's not only noticeable, it can mean the difference between > >life and death (e.g., in controllers for medical equipment -- pausing > >for 1/2 seconds while the GC runs can mean that the laser burns off > >stuff that shouldn't be burned off the patient's body). > > > >But then again, considering the bulk of all software being written > >today, how much code is actually mission-critical real-time apps or > >game engine cores? I suspect real-time apps are <5% of all software, > >and while games are a rapidly growing market, I daresay less than > >30-40% of game code actually needs to be pauseless (mainly just > >video-rendering code -- code that handles monster AI, for example, > >wouldn't fail horribly if it had to take a few extra frames to decide > >what to do next -- in fact, it may even be more realistic that way). > >Which, in my estimation, probably doesn't account for more than 10% > >of all software out there. The bulk of software being written today > >don't really need to be GC-less. > > > > > >T > > > > So how much experience do you have with game engine programming to > make such statements? [...]
Not much, I'll admit. So maybe I'm just totally off here. But the last two sentences weren't specific to game code, I was just making a statement about software in general. (It would be a gross misrepresentation to claim that only 10% of a game is performance critical!) T -- Many open minds should be closed for repairs. -- K5 user