Multi-core in the Source Engine

Valve's Hardware Days have become something of a staple in the world of the technical press. We first went out to visit the legendary game makers in order to see Lost Coast, then followed that up last year with coverage of the cinematic extensions to Day of Defeat.

This year, Valve is talking to us about what is possibly its most difficult iteration of the Source engine yet - adding multi-thread support to make the most of the new dual-core and quad-core CPUs coming from Intel and AMD. The timing of the day is to coincide with the release of Intel's Kentsfield quad-core chip, which is released today.

We had an hour-long presentation from Valve staff, then asked questions of the team, including Gabe Newell, for a further hour. We discussed the transition to multi-core in depth, and we have come away with a slick understanding of Valve's implementation, as well as a couple of benchmarks that we can use to demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach. This is an exciting one, so sit down and prepare for some multi-threaded crowbar action.

Source

Put into development for Half Life 2, the Source engine has become one of the most widely played engines on the planet. It powers not only HL2, but its expansions - Episode One and the upcoming Episode Two - as well as extensions including Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. It's also widely used by third parties - Dark Messiah is built on the engine.

Writing the Source engine took Valve a long time - a long time. The release of HL2 was put back a year to allow for things to be finished. However, the firm's switch to episodic content - delivered through its online distribution platform, Steam - has allowed it to add to the engine pretty quickly and regularly since the release. HDR and cinematic effects are two of the upgrades that we've seen to the engine, both of which are designed to make things look better and richer. This dedication to the 'richness' of the gameplay experience is an ethos that permeates Valve - programmers are regularly found enthusing about how what they're coding will add depth and interactivity to the game. As Gabe Newell insisted today:

"Fundamentally, games are about what you do, not what you see. So in terms of things which make games fundamentally profound experiences - and differentiate them from non-interactive entertainment such as TV and film - it's more about what you do on the CPU than on the GPU."

Valve's multi-core transition is about allowing hardware enthusiasts to get hold of software that really takes advantage of the awesome new power we're going to see over the coming months. But more than that, it's about driving games further and deeper, making them - simply - better.