Intel Smoke Application Demo Using Horsepower
Intel has been showing off the Smoke multi-threaded game framework for a few months now, but it appears they have moved some existing Smoke systems over to a new demo called Horsepower. Smoke already contained a threaded AI system so this capability was migrated to Horsepower. Intel has posted a video to YouTube showing off this demo called Horsepower. See what a difference the new Windows 7 kernel makes compared to Windows Vista. The Windows 7 kernel is optimized for use with Intel core microarchitecture and not only does it perform faster it also allows you to put a few cores to sleep while maintaining peak performance. If you watch closely it would look like the Windows 7 system has some stutters.
Horsepower was created to showcase a perceptible difference for users with a multi-core CPU. By threading to take advantage of multi-core CPU power, a few horses running in a field are multiplied to hundreds of horses (Figs. 13). Dynamically adjusting the number of horses drawn on-screen maintains a consistent frame rate of 30 frames per second (fps). The demo decreases the number of horses drawn on screen until 30 fps is hit and maintained and, on the flip side, increases the number of horses on screen until the target 30 fps is hit. Although the horses are the main animated objects in this demo, you can use this technique on any ambient animations in a game for a better game experience.
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