Here we go

[lolec]

Ok, I know this is a heated subject and that it has come up several times in the past, however, I think it's important to re-evaluate our assumptions from time to time, specially when initial conditions change so drastically.

While I understand and agree that 8 years ago the right decision was to be proudly CPU only, it seems like we live in a completely different world now.

1. High end GPUs have large amounts of VRAM
2. GPU compute power is growing at an insane rate compared do CPU
3. Rendering tech also evolved to make GPU more capable and versatile
4. Vray is Hybrid, Corona is part of Chaos now.

So my question is, Has the situation changed enough to make you consider changing your original stance and maybe work on a Hybrid solution to take advantage of the good that GPU has to offer? Is that even technically feasible or is Corona so strictly CPU only that there is no way to take advantage of that other than denoising?

I fear that at the current rate of progress in hadrware, Corona won't be able to compete. I love Corona and want it to continue to be the best render engine forever :)

 

[TomG]

There are still no plans to port Corona to GPU - being on GPU comes with certain limitations, and we're not willing to compromise and have limitations :) Our focus remains on making Corona the best CPU based render engine out there, and there is still great demand for such an engine!

(also btw we have heard it many, many, many times... "But this time, this is it, this is different!" ;) )

[lolec]

Yes, I understand the limitations and I also believe it was the right decision when it was made in ~2013?  But I think it is wise to challenge assumptions from time to time. I absolutely don't have all of the information, you guys are the genius minds who made the right decision in 2013 when you had all of the information, but just because things haven't changed in the past that doesn't mean they won't ever change.

Is the market similar enough that the decision still holds? I truly don't know! That's why I'm asking and I trust your answer. I can only see one side of the picture and that is market pressure. There is enormous market pressure for better and better GPUs, Gaming, AI, even crypto etc.

But the market pressure for better CPUs is not that strong, the evidence is how we have been essentially stuck at the high end for a few years now.

I don't think this will flip the market in the near term, Corona is and will continue to be one of the most popular engines! But stay humble and nimble! re-evaluate your position constantly! don't let a shift in the industry take you by surprise as it happens with so many companies! For every example of an industry not changing I can give you one where the industry changed suddenly and the leaders didn't react on time. (kodak, blackberry...) I love you and don't want that to happen :)

[lolec]

BTW. I realize this question often comes from the OMG FSTORM WOW OCTANE OMFG crowd.

That is not where I'm coming from. If we compare the best CPU available in 2013 to the best available today we get around a 12x increase in render speed. If we do the same for GPU its about 6x, that's why I think it was such a good decision, but we still don't have info for the 4090 so the gap might close this year.

[TomG]

For sure! We can confirm that this is not an issue of being taken by surprise, we do watch all progress in technology and base our decisions on that, and keep those open to re-evaluation whenever there is a shift.

Definitely lots of cool things happening with tech right now, the AI stuff I am watching with fascination :) With the next crop of GPUs from NVIDIA at least, the pricing, power consumption, and physical size of those is getting to be a whole new set of considerations too, so it isn't compute power without anything else to consider. I think we are just leaving an interesting phase where compute power jumped in both CPU and GPU without much else as a downside, but those days seem to be passing, sadly.

[lolec]

Oh yeah my next question was going to be about neural rendering :P are you guys playing around with that?

[TomG]

Watching, but not playing around with.

BTW I think CPUs are entering a different time too, now with chips having only some cores being performance cores, and some being economy cores. The direction of progress is always shifting! Going to be an interesting next couple of years (mind you it is always an interesting next couple of years, which is something I love about tech!)