Mac multi-threaded opengl?

[elias4444]

Just wondering if there was a way to turn multi-threaded opengl on via lwjgl or not? I hear it can seriously boost performance for Macs. And if so, how do you use it? 

[Matzon]

If you're not limited OpenGL wise, then you can multithread your application in general. However OpenGL itself is not multithreaded and won't gain anything from lots of context switches when rendering using multiple threads.

[Fool Running]

Just wondering if there was a way to turn multi-threaded opengl on via lwjgl or not? I hear it can seriously boost performance for Macs. And if so, how do you use it?

I thought multi-threaded OpenGL was a driver thing (i.e. use a separate thread to send stuff to the graphics card or something). I know its an option in the newest NVidia drivers, so that's what I assumed. But I could be wrong

[cornholio]

Just wondering if there was a way to turn multi-threaded opengl on via lwjgl or not? I hear it can seriously boost performance for Macs. And if so, how do you use it?

I thought multi-threaded OpenGL was a driver thing (i.e. use a separate thread to send stuff to the graphics card or something). I know its an option in the newest NVidia drivers, so that's what I assumed. But I could be wrong

i guess your are talking about this feature:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/08/16/multithread/index.php

i don't think this feature could be leveraged by LWJGL. it just means that there is some kind
of 'internal command pipeline' for OpenGL operations to make better use of the dual core in
macpro machines...

[cornholio]

the feature in action:
Apple WWDC Demo of World of Warcraft on Leopard OSX 10.5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM6s59OPJbk

[princec]

Wow, that really is an impressive jump. I wonder if Tribal Trouble will receive a (largely unnecessary ) similar performance hike?

Cas

[elias4444]

I noticed in the demo that they said they enabled it via a single line of code... anyone know what that line is? 

[catchpole]

Im not looking at this from a gaming point of view, I'm working on a visualization tool for various data sources etc (databases, object models etc).  My approach will be to use multiple threads to collect and prepair what needs to be rendered (as these threads may block for various amounts of time) and then syncronize the results into an object tree the single renderer thread can run over very quickly. 

[Orangy Tang]

I stumbled across this thread today: http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=015291

It contains some interesting info on the nVidia multithreading implementation (IIRC "cass" is an nVidia engineer). Sounds like it can have some nasty side effects as to the speed of seemingly benign function calls.