ECE4893A/CS4803MPG: Multicore and GPU Programming for Video Games

Fall 2009

Homework #1: History

Due: Thursday, August 27 at start of lecture (as hardcopy)

Late policy: The homework will be graded out of 20 points. Homeworks
submitted after class starts will lose 5 points. Homeworks submitted the
next day will lose 5 additional points per day.
(We understand thst sometimes multiple assignments hit at once, or other
life events intervene, and hence you have to make some tough choices. We’d
rather let you turn something in
late, with some points off, than have a “no late assignments
accepted at all”
policy, since the former encourages you to still do the assignment
and learn something from it, while the latter just grinds down your soul.)

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Note there is no “right” answer to the questions posed in (1) and (2). These
are intended to get your brain cells firing about these sorts of issues.
Enlighten and entertain us with your answers. You should consider the
capabilities of the graphics hardware in addition to the capabilities of the
main CPU.
You can find information about
the systems discussed on Wikipedia and through futher Googling.

1) Sega’s original
advertising pitted their Genesis against the NES. This was not
really a fair comparison, since the Genesis came out much later. A fairer
comparison would be to consider the Super NES, which came out in 1990, but that
isn’t really fair either since the Super NES came out a couple of years
after the Genesis. The
SNK Neo Geo came out at around the same time as the Super NES. Compare the
Super NES with the Neo Geo. Decide which of the two you think has the best
“bang per buck” (notice the Neo Geo was much more expensive than the SNES!),
and convincingly explain why in somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of
a page of elegant prose. (Yes, I am being deliberately vague about what I
mean by “bang per buck.”)

(As an aside, I stumbled across
Last Hope,
a homebrew game created for the
Neo Geo and
Dreamcast in 2006!)

2) In the lecture on Friday, 8/24, we looked at the Sega Saturn,
Sony Playstation, and Nintendo 64, which were the most successful consoles
of that generation. A couple years before that, the Atari Jaguar,
Amiga CD32, and 3D0 Interactive Multiplayer were released. Although they were
nice pieces of hardware, they were all commercial failures.
Choose two of these three
devices. Decide which of the two you think is the most “powerful,” and
convincingly explain why in somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of a page of elegant
prose. (Yes, I am being deliberately vague about what I mean by “powerful.”)