Unreal Engine 4 needs lots of processors

By Robert Purchese Published 23 February, 2010

Rein talks "massively multi-core" systems.

Epic Games' Mark Rein has explained that Unreal Engine 4 simply would not work on the current flock of machines.

"Unreal Engine 4 is designed for the day we get massively multi-core processors," he told Kotaku. "[It's] still a long ways off."

Rein told Eurogamer in 2008 that UE4 was merely a "research project" at the time and that the studio's plan was to aim it at the next generation of consoles "so it is many years away".

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About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ChthonicEcho #1 2 years ago

    I thought Monday was slow news day.

  • jambo74 #2 2 years ago

    A PS3 has many cell processors

  • Collymilad #3 2 years ago

    "A PS3 has many cell processors"

    *facepalm*

  • Cosmopolitan #4 2 years ago

    I hate it when they say "A (long) wayS off", it's ungrammatical.

  • the_mtfr #5 2 years ago

    #2, for very low values of "many".
    Edited by 1 at 23/02/10 @ 10:11

  • des #6 2 years ago

    What if all systems go Wii-route?Who is going to buy your engine then?

  • the_mtfr #7 2 years ago

    des, the thing called a personal computer won't go the Wii route.

  • Eraser #8 2 years ago

    morning glory

  • MORZTAN #9 2 years ago

    "I thought Monday was slow news day."

    They are saving their strengts for tomorrows Nintendo-Megaton! :)

  • Loghorn #10 2 years ago

    @jambo74: Um, no, it doesn't.

    @des: Hopefully, they won't. Otherwise, I'm hopping onto PC gaming. PC should definitely be able to handle UE4 very soon.

  • chessboxer #11 2 years ago

    Did he really mean multiple processors or is he talking about CPU's with more than 4 cores. I don't like the prospect of forking out for another Core i7 975 to run a UE4 game which may also be released on the current generation of consoles. However if Epic are going to work on UT4 and bring back the game play (and story) that made UT2004 so excellent and more fun to play than UT3, then I could be persuaded...

    @ jambo74

    The PS3 was supposed to have 2 Crell processors but Sony went the cheaper route and only used 1 and replaced the other with an RSX. I magine how much the PS3 would have cost at launch if they didn't change the spec from the preview models (the ones with 2x HDMI outputs and numerous USB slots on the back).

  • wellzy4eva #12 2 years ago

    Does this mean that their primary concern is actually pleasing PC gamers (with high spec systems) and not pandering primarily to the console market? go Epic :)

    Oh I have no doubt that Xbox 1080 and PS4 will be multi-core beasts anyway, but it's good to hear Crytek are not the only company that is resorting to PC ports instead of Pc dedicated games.

  • Murton #13 2 years ago

    A bit of a gamble to make an engine that actually requires something that is not only not the industry standard but something that hasn't even been hinted at by the industry at large.

    What happens if gaming hardware moves away from just slapping extra cores down and goes for something unexpected? Where would that leave UE4? It's great to see that Epic are looking to the future and working on the next version but until you know what the hardware is going to look like you have to remain flexible.

  • BobsUncle #14 2 years ago

    @chessboxer

    A core is a processor. They just call them cores when there's more than one on the same chip.

    [edit]
    Although you can get single core processors. :-)
    Edited by 1 at 23/02/10 @ 11:01

  • BobsUncle #15 2 years ago

    @Murton

    These guys talk directly to Nvidia/AMD/Intel and they understand where hardware is going more than most people.

    It's hardly a gamble for them. Unless Quantum computers are announced in the next 5 years it's a pretty safe bet processors will go highly multi core.

  • YoungPayters #16 2 years ago

    1 million coded lines. in multi-threaded glory. what a nightmare to create..... but have fun with that boys!

  • linksdad #17 2 years ago

    Murton, you may not have heard of Intel's roadmap. Larabee may have been shelved, but the thing is, noone is going to develop a single core chip that outperforms the best multicores. Increasing the number of cores while improving them is what most chip makers are doing.

  • sneetch #18 2 years ago

    Unreal 4 is going to have a truly realistic vaseline-smeared effect then? Excellent. :)

  • des #19 2 years ago

    Former Crysis lead graphics programmer is working at Epic,so i think that we can expect good stuff from UE4.

  • sneetch #20 2 years ago

    @mickey2010
    " A PS3 has many cell processors " yes, but

    No, it doesn't. It has one. A single one.

  • StooMonster #21 2 years ago

    chessboxer: "Did he really mean multiple processors or is he talking about CPU's with more than 4 cores. I don't like the prospect of forking out for another Core i7 975"

    Some CPU have multiple physical cores and also multiple virtual ones. So a Core i7 has 4 physical cores each of which acts as two virtual ones (via hyperthreading) resulting in total of 8-cores; the latest Intel chips have 6 physical cores, each with two virtual ones, resulting in 12-cores per CPU.

    Xbox's CPU has 3 physical cores and two virtual cores each, so it has 6-cores. PS3's Cell has one core with two threads, Cell is therefore 2-cores but has six (usable) SPE (tiny co-processor cores that cannot access main memory).

    Nvidia are now calling their GPU multi-cores (i.e. new cards have 512 CUDA cores) in order to promote their massively parallel computing initiatives.

  • Seth. #22 2 years ago

    iirc tim sweeney had in the past hinted they might use software transactional memory in UE4, this halves the speed of memory operations but makes it easier to develop lock free parallel code. hence 2-4 core pc processors will actually run the game slower, but the 16-32 core specialized proccesors in next gen console machines will get a benefit since tasks that are too dangerous (the threads might lock) to run in parallel now will be able to be assigned randomly to free cores. i am not sure if they will actually keep this idea though

  • StooMonster #23 2 years ago

    By the time the next generation of consoles are available, 2-core and 4-core PCs will be ancient history. ;)

  • Slabbathepave #24 2 years ago

    I need friends with AvP. Add me or else.

    PSN ID: Slabbathepave

    Just realised i posted this where i ought not. I hope you can all one day forgive me.
    Edited by 1 at 23/02/10 @ 13:40

  • smoothn00dle #25 2 years ago

    Talk Shit! back to sleep

  • subtlesnake #26 2 years ago

    "Did he really mean multiple processors or is he talking about CPU's with more than 4 cores."

    I guess he's talking about CPUs with 16/32/64 cores, which we'll see in 3 or 4 years time, and will (probably) form the basis for the next generation of consoles.

  • FladgeMangle #27 2 years ago

    @ StooMonster

    Sorry, pedant mode ON : The Cell has eight SPEs, only one of which is disabled for redundancy, leaving seven available. Theoretically this gives the PS3 nine threads, well ..ish. Obviously, this is notoriously hard to achieve.

    Notice the way I shoehorned the word "redundancy" into a thread about the games industry? Ah me...

  • jambo74 #28 2 years ago

    @Loghorn:

    I mean processors.

    The eight fully-functional co-processors called the Synergistic Processing Elements, or SPEs

    That is fully-functional.

    The SPEs act as co-processors for the PPE and six of them are available for programs to make use of.

    That is available for programs to make use of.
    Edited by 3 at 23/02/10 @ 16:32

  • fongy #29 2 years ago

    My only problem with this is that I think too many games nowadays are using Unreal 3 engine and it's showing its age nowadays...
    Even titles like Arkham Asylum that really push it to its limits, kind of begin to look a bit 'generic' and 'samey'...
    if UE4 is way off - unless they do an overhaul and do 3.5 which is a lot better than current UE3, then games graphics / technology needs to move away (I assume they use it to reduce costs) because Batman AA, Gears of War 2, Dark Void, etc. are all becoming much of a muchness... (although great games in themselves)...

  • stuntmaster #30 2 years ago

    will we get a gears of war 3 or will it come out when unreal engine 4 comes out

  • gott_sei_dank #31 2 years ago

    I don't watch it but I'm sure that on BBC's Click from CES, Intel's CEO said something along the lines of desktop PCs not going beyond 8 cores.

  • StooMonster #32 2 years ago

    FladgeMangle, notice I wrote "usable".

    Broadband Cell has 8 SPE but PS3 uses 7 SPE Cell for higher yields and lower price. Of those 7 SPE, one is reserved by the PlayStation OS (e.g. used by hypervisor and encryption keys) -- so you can only use 6 of them.

    And you are right, "ish" to number of threads; Cell can run 2 general purpose threads and six SPE ones. However, it's still pretty darn powerful approach.

    LOL at reduction in + on my post above; technical facts, yeah - rate them. :)

  • Highwayman #33 2 years ago

    powerful until you realise that cell cpu is made with a sandwich of powerpc cpus which are very low end gear by PC standards...not even in AMD/Intel league

  • Highwayman #34 2 years ago

    Remember all the PS3 fanboys wooping on about getting the number crunch record on something like folding at home last year? no one recalls that withing weeks a CUDA enabled version came out for PC and the PS3 record was gone forever.

  • dacicus #35 2 years ago

    Do you think that this new Intel CPU can handle it?

    http://www. physorg.com/news185091432.html

  • freakzilla #36 2 years ago

    @jambo74
    This is exactly what I thought of straight away, PS3 has a total of 7 cores for devs to use and one of them is dual threaded. Unreal engine 4 would probably work better on PS3 than UE3 but if we take whole UE4 into account it might be too memory hungry or some other thing that makes it unsuitable for ps3 use.

  • jambo74 #37 2 years ago

    Mind you 'core's & 'processors' are two different things.