Help end child hunger
Jun 082011
 

In March, 2010, the Khronos group approved an extension to add timers to OpenGL. The version was 3.2. As of OpenGL 3.3 this functionality has become part of the specification.

As mention in the Very Simple Profile Library page, profiling is an essential technique to truly understand how to improve the performance of an application. Being able to get time measurements is important both in the development stage as well as during run-time after the application has been released. OpenGL Timer Queries allows us to profile the GPU. i.e. to determine the amount of time it takes to execute a command, or sequence of commands in the GPU.

A tutorial is available in here describing the OpenGL timer functions, showing how to use them, and describing a double buffer approach to prevent the application from being stalled while waiting for query results.

Mar 212011
 

World’s Total CPU Power: One Human Brain | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Our total storage capacity is the same as an adult human’s DNA. And there are several billion humans on the planet.

To put our findings in perspective, the 6.4*1018 instructions per second that human kind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.

The above may be true, but computers, as opposed to humans, are always increasing their capacity and computational power. Furthermore it is easier to make a computer than a human being. It does make you think how things will be in … years (fill in the blank).