Computer Graphics World

4 January 2009 PRODUCT: GRAPHICS CARDS Nvidia has made available its most powerful professional graph- ics card yet, the Quadro FX 5800. This new card is tuned for rapidly visualizing and interpreting massive data- sets, which, until now, were unattainable on a worksta- tion graphics board. The card offers as many as 240 CUDA program- mable parallel cores and the industry's fi rst 4 GB graph- ics memory. Other advanced features include: interactive 4D modeling with time-lapse capabilities, massive memory band- width of up to 102 GB/sec, and fi ll rates that exceed 52 billion texels per second and geometry performance of 300 million triangles per second. Furthermore, the card supports next- generation OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 10 applications. The Quadro FX 5800 GPU features true 10-bit color, enabling billions, rather than millions, of color variations for rich, vivid image quality with broad dynamic range for greater realism. The Quadro FX 5800 graphics board, which is priced at $3499, is available now. The company also introduced the Quadro FX 4800 ultra- high-end professional graphics card with advances in GPU architecture, added graphics memory, and 30-bit color. Equipped with 192 CUDAT parallel computing cores, the Quadro FX 4800 delivers a 2x performance increase over previ- ous generations of ultra-high-end graphics cards. Equipped with 1.5 GB graphics memory, the Quadro FX 4800 has the capac- ity to process large textures and frames in real time while providing fi ll rates of 38 billion texels per second and geometry performance of 300 million trian- gles per second. The Quadro FX 4800 is avail- able today for $1999. In other news, Nvidia delivered the Quadro Plex 2200 S4 Visual Computing System (VCS), a 3D accelerator for remote graphics visualization and rendering. Designed to address demanding remote graphics and off-line rendering challenges, the Quadro Plex 2200 S4 VCS is available in a standard 1U form factor for large-scale server deployment. The 2200 S4 contains four Quadro FX 5800 GPUs, with a total frame buffer of 16 GB (4GB per GPU), for real-time processing of large textures and frames, and full-scene anti-aliasing. It also sports a CUDA parallel computing processor (supporting as many as 960 CUDA cores). The Quadro Plex 2200 S4 VCS is available now for $14,995. SGI Offers Brand-New VUE PRODUCT: VISUALIZATION Silicon Graphics launched VUE, a suite of software visualiza- tion solutions that changes the way customers create, distrib- ute, and use visual information. With VUE software, SGI brings the power of its Reality Center immersive environments to laptop, desktop, or mobile devices. VUE software solutions combine visual information from any source application or platform, fuse it into an intuitive, three-dimensional viewing experience, and securely deliver that experience to anyone, independent of the device being used. VUE features fi ve components. FusionVUE integrates any kind of information in any combination from any source, and presents information via an intuitive, contextual, and three- dimensional VUEspace environment. SoftVUE transforms any standard computing system into an integrated compute and visualization platform, without specialized graphics hardware. PowerVUE, meanwhile, renders large-scale visualization inter- actively and in real time. Additionally, RemoteVUE delivers visual information to any user, on any device, anywhere in the world. And, EventVUE delivers high-level visibility into complex situa- tions in real time, giving decision-makers a 360-degree view of complex events while avoiding information overload. SGI's VUE solutions are optimized for the company's Virtu family of server-based visualization solutions and can run on any industry-standard x86 computing platform. Nvidia Deals New Cards

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