OS Support/Architecture

FiringSquad: Which operating systems will the 64-bit Unreal Tournament 2003 port support and when will they be made available?

We've been up and running on 64-bit Linux for months, and will release it publically at the consumer Opteron launch. Stay tuned for news regarding a 64-bit Windows version.

FiringSquad: What are your thoughts on the Athlon 64 and Opteron micro-architecture? How important is the integrated memory controller and 64-bit architecture and which feature do you feel is the most significant?

Doubling the number of registers is a big and unquestionable win.

I see the onboard memory controller as a big win architectually, because it makes it possible to reduce system memory latency in half. Most people don't realize it, but system memory latency has only improved about 20X since the Apple ][. Relative to CPU speed, it has worsened by 200X, so that now it takes 350 CPU cycles to read an uncached memory address.

Of course, having the memory controller on-die means that AMD had better be able to update the core frequently enough to track speed boosts in available memory. If AMD's memory controller is stuck at 333 MHz when 533 MHz memory is readily available and supported on Intel motherboards, that's going to put it at a disadvantage.


FiringSquad: How do you feel AMD's 64-bit efforts compare to Intel's 64-bit Itanium family?

Hammer follows the PC CPU pricing model. It's going to be very reasonably priced for the moderate high-end at launch, and over the next year will go down in price so that Hammer can ship in high-end, mid-range, and low-end PC's in all existing pricing segments, consumer, workstation, and server, desktop and mobile. It runs all existing 32-bit software and OS's extremely well, better than existing AMD processors, and will run future 64-bit software and OS's extremely well.

Itanium isn't anything like that. You might as well be comparing Hammer to PA-RISC or SPARC. These are CPU's from a world alien to PC users, where you buy a $10,000 workstation containing a pair of $4000 CPU's and you only run the one or two CAD programs you bought your workstation for, because you can't run existing software at any reasonable level of performance. It's an interesting architecture, but it doesn't have anything to do with me or you.

FiringSquad: How important a role will the 64-bit instructions play in your next generation engine? Will you be adding exclusive features for 64-bit users?

There's a good chance 64-bit will likely be mandatory for content development. Since we release the Unreal level editor and scripting framework to users, this affects gamers and not just us internally.

For playing the game, we'll support both 32-bit and 64-bit. Depending on how much content we end up with, there's a good chance that we'll expose high-detail modes that will require 64-bit, giving you higher texture detail, for example. But there won't be any divergence in the gameplay itself.


FiringSquad: What kind of development support have you received from AMD so far? Do you feel AMD is actively supporting the game development community with its 64-bit launch?

Yeah, AMD is really standing behind the platform, not just providing early hardware, but also assuring that all of the development tools and OS components are in place and available to developers.

Our thanks go out to Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein of Epic Games for making this interview possible. We certainly look forward to testing 64-bit Unreal Tournament 2003 when it’s released later this year!