A New Architecture for Games and Simulations Using GPUs

Abstract

Multi-thread architectures are the current trends for both PCs (multi-core CPUs and GPUs) and game consoles such as the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) have evolved into extremely powerful and flexible processors, allowing its use for processing different data. This advantage can be used in game development to optimize the game loop. As reported in the literature, GPGPUs have been used in processing some steps of the game loop, while most of the game logic is still processed by the CPU. This proposal differs by presenting an architecture designed to process practically the entire game loop using the GPU. Two test cases, a crowd simulation and a 2D game shooter prototype called GpuWars, are presented to illustrate the proposed architecture.