Computer games seem to grow bigger with each passing year. Gone are the days that an entire game fit easily on a tiny floppy disk. If you never encountered a floppy disk, I suggest you check out Wikipedia's article.

Many games nowadays need to be downloaded and it is not uncommon for game downloads to exceed 10 gigabytes.

Some games break the hundred gigabytes mark easily on the hard drive, but downloads tend to be smaller thanks to compression technologies.

Game downloads increasing in size may cause a number of issues:

• It takes longer to download the game. This is especially true if the Internet connection is slow or unstable, or if the used service or server is slow.
• Updates may be downloaded quicker thanks to the technology. Updates may also download faster.
• It takes longer before games can be played. Buying a game and immediately playing it is a thing of the past. Downloads and installations take longer and longer to complete.

AMD is launching a new technology that it says is designed to make game downloads considerably smaller.

Neural Texture Block Compression to make game downloads smaller

Here are the details:

• AMD announced Neural Texture Block Compression on X and plans to unveil it officially during the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2024 (EGSR) from Juli 3 to 5 in London.
• It works by automatically compressing textures while the game is being downloaded to the user's device.
• AMD uses neural networks for this.
• Easy integration according to AMD as game developers do not have to change how games load and display textures.  Compression happens before game start so that the execution of the game is not impacted in any way by the technology according to AMD.
• The technology works in existing and upcoming games. AMD says that the source code does not need to be changed.

AMD has yet to demonstrate the new technology. This will happen during the conference in London. It is likely that AMD will provide examples so that the actual savings will become clearer.

AMD has not announced when the new technology will become available. We will have to wait until the conference in London for that as well.

Do you play computer games? Have you encountered game downloads or updates that seemingly took ages? Feel free to leave a comment down below.