CGDigest has a nice compilation of 45 free models gathered around the internet.
Bellow is a list of 45 3d models gathered from various sites. I have only included models that are useful for architectural visualization purposes (3d cars, bathroom items, furniture, electronics, urban elements, etc.).
Some good ones in here if you’re into architectural work, like the (Shown) Escalator model. Those things are a pain to do yourself (so I’m told).
Everyone seems to support renewable energy (solar farms, wind turbines) on the surface, but as soon as you ask them if they would mind a 50-foot Wind Turbine in their backyard, NIMBY kicks in full-force. New-Zealand company Truescape has found that visual simulations, conceptual animations combining actual simulated or measured data with site data, can go a long way to allaying these fears.
Measures to combat such objections have been developed and successfully implemented by a New Zealand-based company, Truescape. One method, time-lapse simulations, using actual site data (wind speed, wind angle, sun beams, turbine dimensions and rotational speed) can accurately depict how a wind farm would appear under the climatic conditions experienced during the course of a day,from dawn to darkness.
A research paper from IBM analyzes a FLOP-Intensive algorithm (dot-products and additions of 2D matrices of single-precision floating point values), and finds that the CPU can actually beat the GPU versions. I’ll let the abstract do the talking (although I’ve reformatted it for readability).
We implement this algorithm on a nVidia GTX 285 GPU using CUDA, and also parallelize it for the Intel Xeon (Nehalem) and IBM Power7 processors, using both manual and automatic techniques. Pthreads and OpenMP with SSE and VSX vector intrinsics are used for the manually parallelized version, while a state-of-the-art optimization framework based on the polyhedral model is used for automatic compiler parallelization and optimization.
The performance of this algorithm on the nVidia GPU suffers from:
- a smaller shared memory,
- unaligned device memory access patterns,
- expensive atomic operations, and
- weaker single-thread performance.
On commodity multi-core processors, the application dataset is small enough to fit in caches, and when parallelized using a combination of task and short-vector data parallelism (via SSE/VSX) or through fully automatic optimization from the compiler, the application matches or beats the performance of the GPU version.
The primary reasons for better multi-core performance include larger and faster caches, higher clock frequency, higher on-chip memory bandwidth, and better compiler optimization and support for parallelization. The best performing versions on the Power7, Nehalem, and GTX 285 run in 1.02s, 1.82s, and 1.75s, respectively. These results conclusively demonstrate that, under certain conditions, it is possible for a FLOP-intensive structured application running on a multi-core processor to match or even beat the performance of an equivalent GPU version.
Not really surprised to see the Power7 perform the best (Given that it’s IBM’s chip and IBM engineers at the helm here). If you read the paper, you’ll see that they use a 500×500 image (4MB in size) with matrices that require 250KB of space (page 6). This won’t fit into the cache of the GTX285 so they spend much time paging data in and out.
I’ld be very curious to see if the new Fermi GTX480 changes this any.
The new NVidia GeForce GTX465′s are now coming out, and Guru3D takes a pair of them from “Point Of View” and puts them through the paces in both single and SLI modes.
Armed with a smaller thermal print, noise levels and performance, NVIDIA is positioning this product in the 279 EUR price range bringing the Fermi architecture below the sub-300 USD price point. The GeForce GTX 465 will position itself in the most affordable graphics card segmented in lower spectrum of the high-end range. As such it will be targeted against the Radeon HD 5830 and should sit in-between that product and the Radeon HD 5850.
It’s a massive 21-page review that covers not just performance, but sound levels, power consumption, and more. The results: Impressive.
With that said, the card is definitely good enough and we certainly do like the GTX 465 for what it is. Your game performance will be good as you will be able to play games in high resolutions with very nice image quality settings. Overall, the performance is nice. Added benefits are of course purchasing a CUDA ready product, and PhysX support. …
Multi-GPU performance then. NVIDIA seriously does have Willy Wonka’s golden ticket in their hands when it comes to 2-way SLI performance. The scaling is just brilliant with each and every time we test it on a GTX 400 series card.
MusicMovieList has a new infographic up that looks at the numbers of 2009 in the film industry. Box Office revenue, top 10 grossing films, and comparisons against other popular forms of entertainment show us that the film industry is easily one of the biggest industries in the US, if not the World.
Despite a dwindling economy in America, Hollywood remains strong and posts impressive figures every year. Since its humble beginnings, the film industry has spread worldwide and grown exponentially while embedding itself into everyday culture…
Fullsize after the break.
via Hollywood International: the Film Industry by the Numbers.
At ISC10, a new Top500 list was published and showed one major upset: China’s “Nebulae” supercomputer unseated long-time Top500 member Roadrunner for the #2 spot. The #1 spot remains the Cray “Jaguar” at Oak Ridge National Labs, with an impressive 1.7 PetaFlops of performance, but China has made an impressive showing.
The Nebulae computer clocked in at 1.27 Petaflops by combining Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with NVidia Tesla C2050′s. While I can’t find concrete numbers anywhere, piecing together various news articles shows:
While the .5 probably means they have some nodes with Tesla’s and some without, it’s a surprising density.
Update 6/1/10: A reader pointed out that, unbeknownst to me, the Top500 list includes the count of GPU cores in the total core count. From his website, he theorizes:
Based on all this information, it is almost certain that Nebulae is built on 4640 nodes, where each node has two X5650 processors and one C2050 GPU, for a total of 9280 processors and 4640 GPUs:
4640 nodes * (12 processor cores + 14 SIMD units) = 120640 cores
Why so many? This comment from the EEtimes sums it up nicely:
The graphics processors are also relatively power efficient. The Nebulae system which uses 4,640 Tesla chips, consumes about 2.55 megawatts compared to about 7 MW for Jaguar.
So it made #2 on the Top500 list with only 1/3rd of the power. But that’s not all, China has another system in the Top10, the Tianhe-1 which couples Intel processors with ATI Radeon 4870′s at an impressive 1:1 ratio (2 CPU’s and 2 GPU’s in each node). Granted, they have only half the nodes of Nebulae at 71680 cores ( = 17920 CPU’s, or 8960 nodes) but that’s enough to put them in the Top 10. And China isn’t stopping there (from the Daily Pioneer):
The super computer named “Xingyun”, has been developed in Tianjin, and works at double the speed of “Tianhe-1″, the previous fastest machine in China.
The Tianhe-1 was developed by the National University of Defence Technology in October 2009, Li Jun, president of the Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd., was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
“Its peak performance reaches nearly three quadrillion calculations per second, three times the peak speed of Tianhe-1,” Li said.
This new machine is expected to be delivered by the end of 2010, so China may have another upset in the next Top500 if ORNL doesn’t step up the game with Jaguar.
If you want to see the list, but don’t want to dig through the text, then check out this neat interactive Treemap that BBC published online.
Over at InsideHPC, they caught up with VCollab’s CEO Prasad Mandava at ISC10 and sat down to talk about their VCollab product and how it relates to their new Marechi.com launch. In short, VCollab is a 3D Model visualization tool, and Marechi.com is a specialized social network for sharing of these 3D models.
Marechi lets you share your 3D models/simulations and socially network with like-minded engineers. This should be of particular interest to the HPC Community because now they can easily reduce, publish and share not only the static 3D data but also the interactive simulations from their scientific computations/discoveries. Marechi uses the state-of-the-art VCollab solution as the foundation for publishing 3D content and also to visualize the physics/simulations thru the free interactive VCollab 3D Viewer.
VCollab is interesting because of it’s two-fold abilities:
Targeted at CAD designers, they claim it will work with simulation outputs as well, although I personally have my doubts of achieving 99% compression on simulation isosurfaces and such. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting technology for those who have to work with groups spread over a wide distance and find remote visualization technologies cumbersome.
via VCollab Launches Social Network for 3D Visualization | insideHPC.com.
Back in January, the Discovery Channel announced that, through a partnership with IMAX and Sony, they would be launching a full 3D channel. They’ve now got some experience under their belt, and executive VP of media technology and operations John Honeycutt talks about some of the challenges with working in 3D. In particular is their experience on “The Deadliest Catch”.
In 2009, we sent out 47 HD cameras on The Deadliest Catch and none came back. This is why we use small HDV cameras to create this content.
Deadliest Catch wouldn’t work in 3D, not only I the loss of 3D cameras not cost-effective, it would make you sick watching it.
And then you have to think about the safety of the cameramen. Using a 3D camera rig would make you effectively blind in one eye, something that isn’t good when working with waves.
Read the other 4 problems, including hardware issues and costs, over at TechRadar.
via 5 problems and pitfalls with shooting 3D | News | TechRadar UK.
It’s only been a week since the GTX480M was announced, and today it’s available in the new Clevo D900F “Gaming Notebook”. Definitely a desktop replacement system, it offers a 17″ screen, Core i7 or Xeno processors, 3 hard drives and 12GB of ram, with your choice of 3 different NVidia GPU’s including the new GTX480M.
Give your games an adrenaline shot with NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480M notebook GPUs. Expect the fastest performance and visually-stunning graphics. Bring notebook gaming closer to cinema quality effects. Experience heart-pounding visuals with the combined power of DirectX 11 and NVIDIA ® PhysX® technologies. Take your game up a notch and connect your notebook to an NVIDIA® 3D Vision™-ready display for an immersive gaming experience. Finally, NVIDIA® Verde™ drivers keep your notebook up to date with the latest applications performing at its peak.
GTX48oM enabled versions seem to start at $3000.
I wanted to take a minute to thank all of you, the VizWorld Readers, for continuing to visit the site, send in tips, and comment!
Yesterday, Compete.com posted their latest figures and I’m amazed to see how well we’re doing! (We’re the blue line). Granted, these numbers are statistical and far from the real numbers of traffic on VizWorld, but still a great sign that we must be doing something right to keep you coming back.
Again, thanks for reading and look forward to hearing from more of you!
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