Computer Graphics World

4 August 2009 HP Unveils xw9400 Workstation PRODUCT: WORKSTATION HP announced the immediate integra- tion of the highly anticipated six-core AMD Opteron 2400 Series proces- sor into the company's family of HP workstations. Ideal for high-end workstation applica- tions in fi elds such as engineering, 3D digital content creation, oil and gas, and science, the HP xw9400 taps the power of the new AMD Opteron processors to deliver higher productivity, especially for multithreaded applications, multitasking, and mega-tasking environments. The HP xw9400 workstation can accommodate up to two six- core AMD Opteron proces- sors, for a total of 12 cores, each of which offers as much as 34 percent more perfor- mance per watt over the previous-generation quad- core processors. AMD HyperTransport 3.0 technology (HT3) increases interconnect rates from 2 gigatransfers per second (GT/sec) up to a maximum 4.8 GT/sec. Additionally, the xw9400 can be confi gured with the ATI FirePro V7750 3D workstation graphics accelerator. The machine includes an 80 PLUS power supply, which is more effi cient than a standard power supply. The HP xw9400 workstation is priced starting at $1899. PRODUCT: RENDERING StudioGPU recently released MachStudio Pro, a profes- sional 3D workfl ow and rendering package. MachStudio Pro offers a seamless way to create and interact with cinematic- quality 3D objects and environments in a nonlinear work- space by leveraging the horsepower of off-the-shelf profes- sional GPUs to deliver real-time and near real-time workfl ow performance on a desktop workstation. MachStudio Pro streamlines real-time 3D workfl ow, allow- ing artists to easily manage and interact with complex light- ing, caustics, cameras, shaders, materials, ambient occlu- sion, and color grading. With MachStudio Pro, render times can be dramatically reduced from hours to minutes, and minutes to seconds or sub-seconds. Comparable fi nal scenes are consistently rendered with MachStudio Pro at rates of 500 to 900 times faster than with traditional rendering packages. A complex 1.98 million polygon high-defi nition image, for example, renders in 14 seconds using MachStudio Pro, while the same scene rendered with a traditional rendering package can take more than three hours to complete. Powered by a real-time rendering engine, MachStudio Pro software fi ts into the creative pipeline after all 3D models are produced, and provides lighting, cameras, materials, compositing, and fi nishing capabilities. The MachStudio Pro workfl ow is akin to a virtual 3D studio environment, allowing artists, designers, directors, and TDs to work with lighting, camera views, and multi-point perspectives for a real-time view of frames as they will appear in the fi nal rendered format. Developed in a true high-end production environment, MachStudio Pro rendering features can eliminate the need for expensive renderfarms. Key product features include: an optimized shader and material pipeline, the ability to adjust and view all render passes independently, a full materials library, interactive ambient occlusion, fully confi gurable lighting and animation constraint system, animatable and keyframable properties for all objects, lights, cameras, and materials, real-time HDR cameras and lighting, and a host of others. An out-of-box, high-performance solution, MachStudio Pro ships with an AMD ATI FireGL V8650 3D workstation graph- ics accelerator card featuring 2 GB onboard graphics memory and a parallel-processing Unifi ed Shader architecture. StudioGPU is now shipping its MachStudio Pro for Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista operating systems. MachStudio Pro carries a special introductory price of $4999, which includes a full year of technical support and product maintenance updates. Education and volume licens- es are also available upon request. StudioGPU Ships MachStudio Pro

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