Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/825852
www.postmagazine.com 12 POST MAY 2017 BITS & PIECES LOS ANGELES — Chaos Group (chaosgroup.com) recently present- ed several advances to V-Ray's GPU rendering capabilities at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, CA, earlier this month. In a presentation titled, "Next Generation GPU Rendering: High-End Production Features on GPU," the company's lead GPU rendering developer Blagovest Taskov (pictured) covered key issues that have affected a number of in- dustries, including entertainment, as well as the solutions the company has pioneered to solve them. Topics covered included, "Breaking the GPU rendering memory barrier," in which memory limitations inherent to GPU computing were discussed, looking at how they have always been a fundamental challenge when ren- dering on GPUs. With recent advanc- es to V-Ray GPU, Chaos Group said that it has reduced overall memory usage by up to 70 percent and up to 700 percent through On-demand Mip-mapping, an intelligent way to automatically resize textures. Since textures consume the most memory, solutions such as these are designed to radically increase the size and complexity of the scenes artists and designers can render. In addition to memory-efficient software developments, Chaos Group reports that V-Ray is now the first commercial renderer to support Nvidia's high-bandwidth interconnect NVLink, which allows video memory to be shared be- tween graphics cards. NVLink is now available in the latest Nvidia Quadro GP100 and Nvidia Tesla P100 cards. Taskov explained the process that bridged V-Ray with NVLink, result- ing in a connection that expands the GPU memory threshold even further. Taskov also shared an exclusive technology preview demonstrat- ing V-Ray's GPU renderer running on a CPU. For the first time, V-Ray computed the same CUDA code on both the GPU and CPU, with the exact same results, allowing users to maximize their hardware, while paving the way for wider adoption of GPU rendering. Further, V-Ray GPU R&D was demonstrated, including high- end production features such as Adaptive Lights, a fast new lighting algorithm that significantly reduces render times, and new support for Nvidia's MDL materials, which is quickly gaining traction as a materi- al format. CHAOS GROUP SHOWCASES V-RAY GPU RENDERING ADVANCES AT GPU CONFERENCE