How do Graphics Cards Work? Exploring GPU Architecture
Graphics Cards can run some of the most incredible video games, but how many calculations do they perform every single second? Well, some of the most advanced graphics perform 36 Trillion calculations or more every single second. But how can a single device manage these tens of trillions of calculations? In this video, we explore the architecture inside the 3090 graphics card and the GA102 GPU chip architecture.
Note: We chose to feature the 30 series of GPUs because, to create accurate 3D models, we had to tear down a 3090 GPU rather destructively. We typically select a slightly older model because we're able to find broken components on eBay. If you're wondering, the 4090 can perform 82.58 trillion calculations a second, and then we're sure the 5090 will be even more.
Table of Contents:
00:00 - How many calculations do Graphics Cards Perform?
02:15 - The Difference between GPUs and CPUs?
04:56 - GPU GA102 Architecture
06:59 - GPU GA102 Manufacturing
08:48 - CUDA Core Design
11:09 - Graphics Cards Components
12:04 - Graphics Memory GDDR6X GDDR7
15:11 - All about Micron
16:51 - Single Instruction Multiple Data Architecture
17:49 - Why GPUs run Video Game Graphics, Object Transformations
20:53 - Thread Architecture
23:31 - Help Branch Education Out!
24:29 - Bitcoin Mining
26:50 - Tensor Cores
27:58 - Outro
How do Video Game Graphics Work?
Have you ever wondered how video game graphics have become incredibly realistic? How can GPUs and graphics cards render such incredibly detailed scenes? Well, in this video we're going to explore how just a bunch of data in your computer gets turned into realistic graphics. Additionally, we'll take a quick look into Ray Tracing, DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling, and many other complicated aspects of video game graphics.
We at Branch Education love to play video games, so this video has been one of our favorite ones to make thus far. It's kind of like getting to look under the hood of your childhood car. Also, it was surprising that practically all video games use similar basic steps to render each frame. Furthermore, as a fun fact, to create this video our team used 1x 3090ti, 3x 3090s, and the model that we tore down was a 3090.
There are just sooooo many topics in the realm of computer graphics that we couldn't cover. If you're interested in part 2 where we'll cover things like UVs, Normal Maps, Shadows, Reflections, Specular Reflections, and much more, tell us in the comments.
Table of Contents:
00:00 - Video Game Graphics
01:11 - Graphics Rendering Pipeline and Vertex Shading
04:16 - Video Game Consoles & Graphics Cards
05:06 - Rasterization
06:51 - Visibility Z Buffer Depth Buffer
10:03 - Pixel Fragment Shading
11:35 - The Math Behind Pixel Shading
14:05 - Vector Math & Brilliant Sponsorship
16:11 - Flat vs Smooth Shading
17:25 - An Appreciation for Video Games
17:58- Ray Tracing
18:45 - DLSS Deep Learning Super Sampling
19:06 - GPU Architecture and Types of Cores
20:06 - Future Videos on Advanced Topics
20:24 - Outro for Video Game Graphics
How does Ray Tracing Work in Video Games and Movies?
TV and Movies have a ton of Computer Generated Images [CGI] to create fantasy worlds with dragons and castles, futuristic intergalactic civilizations, or historically accurate cities of 1700s Japan, such as in the recent TV show Shogun. But have you ever wondered how these CGI / Computer Generated Images are made? And how are these scenes so accurate that they fool the eye into thinking they are real. In this video, we're diving into Path Tracing, a type of Ray Tracing algorithm. We'll explore exactly how Ray Tracing is used to create accurate lighting and realistic scenes and how it uses quadrillions of calculations.
Thank you to Cem Yuksel, a professor at the School of Computer at the University of Utah. He helped to proofread the script for inaccuracies, and his only course on computer graphics and interactive graphics was incredibly useful in researching this video.
Scanlands by Piotr Krynski
Agent 327 Barbershop by Blender Animation Studios
The Junk Shop by Alex Trevino. Original Concept by Anais Maamar
Thank you to the Blender Dev Team!
Table of Contents:
00:00 - How does CGI Computer Generated Images Work?
01:00 - How is Ray Tracing an Incredibly Difficult Problem to Solve
02:41 - How to Create a CGI Scene
05:48 - Rendering a Scene with Ray Tracing
09:09 - Lighting a Scene with Ray Tracing: Global Illumination
13:46 - Material Roughness and Bouncing Rays
16:04 - Solving Ray Tracing
19:57 - Graphics Cards and Ray Tracing Cores
22:31 - Brilliant Sponsorship
24:20 - We Love Ray Tracing in Blender
25:27 - Ray Tracing in Video Games
26:23 - Screen Space Ray Tracing
