Class 10, Assignment 1: Synthetic Humans, Moore’s Law and GPUs

          In this lecture we are being introduced to synthetic humans and the advancements in technology necessary to render a believable, synthetic human, virtually. At the time this lecture was given (circa 2008) rendering of 3D environments and objects in real time was barely possible because of the massive computing power required.  So typically, a user had to queue up the rendering process to be done offline in a process called Pre-rendering or by utilizing many computers in a rendering farm to produce results in near-real time.

Enter Moore's Law:  Moore's law loosely stats that the "density of transistors on a microprocessors double every 18 months for the same cost."  This essentially means that CPUs double their speed every year and half and have been doing so since the 1960s.
         
          2013 and beyond:  Technology has advanced and continues to advance at such a fast rate that every 9 months or so CPUs and GPUs are doubling in power to the point where rendering cinematic quality, synthetic humans in real time is now possible and has actually been possible for a couple years now.  We've come a long way since the lecture was originally given.