MMORPG Server using CUDA

Hi, I am helping design an mmorpg server. I have been programming in many different languages for many years now, but bhave no experience with technologies like CUDA. A team member suggested using CUDA to do 3D distance and collision checks for clients server side, since a normal CPU isn’t well equiped to do heavy floating point math like a GPU is. My question is: would it be more efficient to do these checks on the gpus, or cpus? Or us CUDA better for longer running algorithms, instead of quick checks for things like line of sight?

Also, can code running on the gpu directly access main memory (via dma or something)?

You need to make batches of about 10000 colision tests and 3D distances.

Yes, host memory can be mapped into the GPU’s address space, as long as it is locked to prevent being swapped out to disk.

Thanks for the quick reply. I understand why it is this way, as it is what I feared. Well, I can have the server change to use CUDA only in certain (rare) situations when it is under extreme loading. This is something I will have to carefully consider, instead of just jumping head first into, as I had hoped to be able to do. Is it feasible to add the jobs as they come in, maintaining efficiency only under heavy load? Or is it such that I would have to set up an actual batch of calculations at once?

I suppose I should further research this topic before I ask anymore questions. You have helped a lot, thank you.

This is good news, and good catch on the paging, it hadn’t crossed my mind.