Parallel Computing in Video Games

Date

Apr 30, 2026

Time

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Speaker

Oliver Franzke

Affiliation

Double Fine Productions (Xbox Game Studios)

Series

TUD ZIH Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Informatik

Other Topics

Informatik, Willkommen

Host

Hartmut Mix

Description

Modern video games are among the most complex real-time parallel systems in consumer computing, combining SIMD, MIMD, and pipeline parallelism within a typical frame budget of 16.6ms on heterogeneous hardware. This talk begins with a brief look at how the exponential growth of output complexity across console generations - in graphics, audio, and CPU throughput - drove the transition from serial to massively parallel architectures. We then examine the domain-specific parallelism of the GPU and contrast its data-parallel strengths with gameplay logic, where circular dependencies, shared mutable state, and unpredictable memory access patterns pose fundamental challenges to parallelization. Using Unreal Engine as a practical case study, we explore the parallelization models and synchronization techniques a modern game engine employs to orchestrate sequential and parallel workloads across CPU threads and GPU under real-time constraints.

Oliver Franzke is a Principal Engineer at Double Fine Productions (Xbox Game Studios) with nearly 25 years of professional experience in the games industry. Across more than 20 shipped titles at studios including LucasArts, Sony, and Double Fine, he has worked on graphics, engine systems, and tools - from the Monkey Island Special Editions to Broken Age, for which he was Lead Programmer. Oliver holds a Diplom in Media Computer Science from TU Dresden, graduating with the highest distinction and receiving the Lohrmann Medal for outstanding academic achievement.

ONLINE BBB: Link ZIH-Colloquia (https://bbb.tu-dresden.de/b/har-oa6-col-lmy)

Links

• Webseite
• Termindetails auf den Webseiten der TU Dresden (https://tu-dresden.de)

Last modified: Apr 30, 2026, 7:35:36 AM