DLSS, XeSS, and FSR are a huge part of NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel’s GPU marketing these days, but local compute and rasterization will return to the spotlight once the high cost of GPU performance goes down, according to Seamus Blackley, the creator and designer of the original Xbox (2001). From the VideoGamer Podcast:
I am a big believer in local compute, and so I think that the world will return to local compute in just a minute when the cost of making super high performance gets a little bit lower.
Blackley, who currently represents video game creators at Creative Artists Agency, goes on to ask:
Nvidia and other graphics companies have changed their focus from better rendering to upscaling and to AI features. It’s like the message there is that it’s not a good business anymore to try to convince people that they’re rendering better, which means you have enough rendering power, which is terrifying to them because then what’s their business? If not trying to sell you a graphics card with more rendering?
“AI is just, it’s just a filter – it’s a machine-learning filter – it’s really dressing it up to be fancy,” he went on to suggest.
“DLSS 4 debuts Multi Frame Generation to boost frame rates by using AI to generate up to three frames per rendered frame,” NVIDIA wrote in January regarding the latest iteration of its Frame Gen technology. “It works in unison with the suite of DLSS technologies to increase performance by up to 8x over traditional rendering, while maintaining responsiveness with NVIDIA Reflex technology.”
January also saw a reveal for FSR 4, a new version of FidelityFX Super Resolution that AMD says was “developed for RDNA 4 and the unique compute aspects of the RDNA 4 AI accelerators.”