Sasha Ostojic has posted on the NVidia blog about his contributions to the NVidia Optimus, including another neat (but eerily quiet) video, and discusses the new hardware that makes it a reality.
We needed hardware support to quickly move the graphics data around in the system, so we created a fast copy engine. The Optimus Copy Engine is a new alternative to traditional DMA (Direct Memory Access) transfers between the GPU frame buffer memory and system memory used by the IGP. With Optimus we also removed multiplexers, called MUXs, so we use the integrated graphics as a display adapter or pass through. The discrete GPU can do the heavy lifting and pass through the results to the integrated graphics chip to be displayed.
Be sure to read our coverage of the NVidia Optimus as well, including a promo video from NVidia showing a great side-by-side comparison of existing switchable graphics and the new Optimus.
Keiichi Matsuda’s film on Vimeo shows the possibilities of Augmented Reality if it really does become ubiquitous and widespread, with the results being simply terrifying if you ask me.
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
A good reminder of what happens when technology meets consumerism and marketing.
Mint has an infographic showing how many members there are of unions as a percent of the total employed across the United States. Not surprisingly, the West coast and the NorthEast have the highest percentage of union members. The SouthEast has the lowest percentage of union members, with Alabama sticking out like a sore thumb. That makes me wonder why Alabama has a higher union membership than say, Georgia or Mississippi, its next door neighbors. It is just a guess, but it could be due to having three automobile manufacturing plants in the state. Mississippi has one (Nissan) and one other under construction (Toyota). Georgia has two (GM and Ford) with a third under construction (Kia). via : State of the Unions
Luxology, creators of Modo, have just released a new product called the “Studio Lighting & Illumination Kit” (SLIK), created by Yazan Malkosh, that compiles presets, scenes, items, and more to give you a good starting point when creating your CG scenes. The result is that you can take your model, import it into one of SLIK’s prebuilt scenes & light rigs, and be ready to go in mere seconds.
“The staging and lighting of a subject can be time-consuming and frustrating without the proper tools, but SLIK allows me to stage and light a scene quickly and painlessly,” said freelance illustrator Warner McGee. “Making small or even large adjustments to the scene is simple and straightforward with these precise and flexible tools.”
The kit is available for $125, but requires a fully functional version of modo401. Full press release after the break.
Lightworks Design has just rev’ed their software to version 8.1, adding support for real-time rendering of Soft Shadows and new programmable shaders.
Roland Roeder from PTC GmbH commented: “The Real-Time Shadow Catcher support in 8.1 is good news for us and the Leather shaders work great! We're also finding that the added support for Real-Time Soft Shadows is making a big difference when we use LightWorks Real-Time Rendering.”
Anandtech has posted an article today on the newly released AMD Radeon HD 5570. Last week was the launch of the 5450, with 80 shaders and a price point of $50. The 5570 has 400 shaders and a price point of $80. How does this compare to the AMD 5670 which also has 400 shaders and a price point of $100? Well, the 5570 has a clock speed of 650 MHz and a memory clock speed of 900 MHz. Both of those are slower than the 5670 which is running with a clock speed of 775 MHz and a memory clock speed of 1000 MHz. But that does not tell the full story. The 5570 is using GDDR3, which transfers two data words per clock cycle, while the 5670 uses GDDR5, which transfers four data words per clock cycle. The Radeon HD 5570 has 45% of the memory bandwidth of the Radeon HD 5670. That sentence tells you just about all you need to know about the Radeon HD 5570. If that doesn’t tell you enough, then the following quote from the article should help you out.
The GDDR3 9600GT can be found for around the same price point, and is anywhere between just as fast as the 5570 to completely clobbering it. The 5570 can’t compete amidst that much of a memory bandwidth gap. If you can fit a full-sized card, you can do much better than the 5570 when it comes solely to performance; the 9600GT and the GT 240 are both much more capable cards for the $80-$85 price tag.
The low end Radeon HD 5450 has a TDP of 19.1 Watts, which makes it great for a HTPC system since it is passively cooled. The Radeon HD 5570 has a TDP of 42.7 Watts, which means that it needs to be actively cooled. This makes it less than perfect for a HTPC system. Hit the article below for more information.
Apple brought their online store down this morning, and the first new thing to appear on the site is the release of Aperture 3, “Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity”.
How many of you out there have used a laptop with NVidia’s Hybrid Switchable Graphics? The answer to the age old problem of having to choose between crappy embedded graphics that offer amazing battery life, or great graphics that drain your battery dry in mere minutes, the implementation has been less than perfect. Current switchable graphics require you to manually shut down applications to free hardware resources before you can switch. NVidia has acknowledged that limitation and just announced their newest offering in the mobile graphics space: Optimus.
Optimus removes all of the manual work of switchable graphics, putting both GPU’s inside the laptop and dynamically switching between them as needed. No work is required on the user’s part, and they get the best of both worlds (Good battery when they’re just surfing the net, and great performance when playing games or using CUDA-accelerated applications).
Lukewarm Media’s newest game “Primal Carnage”, a first-person shooter that puts you against dinosaurs in a lush jungle environment, will be driven by the Unigine engine. Aiming for a release in Q4 2010 on both Windows and Linux (yay!), it aims to have both full mod support and extremely high-end graphics content, all thanks to their choice of a public engine.
The Unigine engine, with its quick-to-learn toolset, has helped Lukewarm Media bring its ideas to reality. There are a number of other exciting aspects to using the Unigine engine including (but not limited to) its support for DirectX 11, and being able to include the Unigine toolset and SDK for development of custom content and mods. This is a mutually beneficial partnership as it should allow both the Unigine and Primal Carnage communities to flourish.
Sasha Ostojic has posted on the NVidia blog about his contributions to the NVidia Optimus, including another neat (but eerily quiet) video, and discusses the new hardware that makes it a reality.
Keiichi Matsuda’s film on Vimeo shows the possibilities of Augmented Reality if it really does become ubiquitous and widespread, with the results being simply terrifying if you ask me.
Lightworks Design has just rev’ed their software to version 8.1, adding support for real-time rendering of Soft Shadows and new programmable shaders.
Apple brought their online store down this morning, and the first new thing to appear on the site is the release of Aperture 3, “Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity”.
How many of you out there have used a laptop with NVidia’s Hybrid Switchable Graphics? The answer to the age old problem of having to choose between crappy embedded graphics that offer amazing battery life, or great graphics that drain your battery dry in mere minutes, the implementation has been less than perfect. Current switchable graphics require you to manually shut down applications to free hardware resources before you can switch. NVidia has acknowledged that limitation and just announced their newest offering in the mobile graphics space: Optimus.
Here’s the pixels for today:
VizWorld.com 
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