NVIDIA's "CineFX" architecture enables real-time cinematic-quality rendering for the first time ever. This powerful combination of hardware and software creates a discontinuity in the PC graphics market by simultaneously empowering developers to put stunning new levels of cinematic-quality imagery in their applications and end users to enjoy that content in real time.
The CineFX architecture is not just about processing power. NVIDIA states that the following are what is required for Real-Time Cinematic Shading :
Advanced Programmability
High-Precision Color
High-Level Shading Language
Highly efficient architecture
High Bandwidth to system memory and CPU
The CineFX architecture aims to be the right step towards the above goals. The main points of CineFX are to provide :
Generalized Vertex Processing
Generalized Pixel Processing
128-bit Floating Point Precision
Highly advanced Rendering architecture
Dramatically improved Performance
What's holding back commodity graphics processors are basically the flexibility (in shaders), extra instruction sets (again, in shaders), political considerations (Microsoft, various IHVs, different APIs, etc.) and, most importantly, performance. You - the gamer - don't want to have to buy boxes and boxes of machinery containing many, many CPUs, lotsa (lotsa) memory and/or many, many video cards with an operating system capable of recognizing/supporting all these multiple-everythings, all capable of running in parallel. That is what is needed given the current PC innovations but is not feasible due to economic reasons. But things are improving.
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