Huge day for NVidia. First the amazing Quadro Fermi series (Read our review of the Quadro 5000), and now new 3D Vision Pro and new AXE systems. First, let’s discuss the impressive new 3D Vision Pro.
NVidia brings their 3D Vision Pro to a new class of applications with one simple change: Switching from IR transmitters to RF transmitters. This effectively eliminates line of sight problems, opening the 3D Vision use for crowds of people, multi-screen displays, and VR environments like the CAVE. Also, this allows them to synchronize glasses to specific displays, as they’ve done in their impressive SIGGRAPH Booth. 3D is a big driver today, and they’ve got around a dozen different 3D displays running different demos all around the booth. Each display has about 4 3d glasses synced to it, and they don’t interfere with other displays, nor do the glasses work with other displays. The display can effectively turn the glasses on and off, without messing with other displays. This kind of managed interface is critical for large-scale professional applications.
“By providing large scale visualization capabilities and remote management capabilities, NVIDIA is pioneering 3D technology for the enterprise, opening the door for professional users and large scale visualization system integrators to utilize 3D in ways not thought of before.” Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research.
The other big announcement coming out right now is the slew of updates in the AXE suite, the Application Acceleration Engines. These are the various support technologies based around the NVidia brand like OptiX (ray tracer), SceneX (scene graph) and others. Today they’are announcing major revisions to several of them.
NVIDIA SceniX 6
- New Bezier Patch geometry class, using Cg tessellation programs for the smoothest of surfaces on NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs;
- OptiX 2 support for faster, interactive ray tracing;
- Continued improvements in overall performance and fidelity, and;
- Future support for iray by mental images.
NVIDIA Cg Toolkit 3
- New tessellation programs, allowing displacement and procedural surfaces to dynamically adapt their tessellation in real-time on the latest NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs, and;
- OpenGL 4 and DirectX 11 level of programmability for the latest in portable, cross platform effects.
NVIDIA OptiX 2
- Optimizations for new NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs, delivering up to 4X performance over previous generation (GT200) GPUs and >10X over G92;
- Support for all NVIDIA CUDA™ architecture-capable NVIDIA GPUs (G92 or later) on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX, and;
- Direct3D and fast interoperability in Direct3D and OpenGL; for flexible compositing and hybrid rendering opportunities.
Again, Amazing stuff from the NVidia folks. I look forward to spending some time in their booth later today, and sharing the experience with you all later tonight!
Full press releases on both topics after the break.
3D Vision Pro:
SIGRRAPH 2010, LOS ANGELES — July 27, 2010 — NVIDIA (Booth #717) announced today NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Pro, a new 3D stereoscopic solution empowering engineers, designers, architects and computational chemists who work with complex 3D designs to see their work in greater detail. 3D Vision Pro solutions brings true stereo 3D back to the desktop with support for LCD panels and offers a practical way to provide a rich, reliable 3D viewing experience for large scale visualization environments like video walls and collaborative virtual environments (CAVEs).
Incorporating active shutter glasses and an innovative radio frequency (RF) communication system, 3D Vision Pro solutions delivers the highest quality stereoscopic experience and supports a wide range of use cases:
- Individuals can experience 3D on LCD panels at their Quadro powered desktop and mobile workstations
- Small groups can view 3D on single or multiple projectors, and
- Larger groups can experience 3D on power walls or in theaters driven by NVIDIA Scalable Visualization Solutions (SVS)
3D Vision™ Pro provides long range connections, up to 150 feet, with no cross talk, blind spots, or other transmission issues between multiple systems. As a professional stereoscopic solution, status information is transmitted from the glasses back to the host for effective IT management.
“With the ability to provide valuable insights into complex data, 3D stereo has become one of the core elements of the modern workstation,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “Together, 3D Vision Pro and Quadro solutions bring the highest quality and most immersive 3D experience to enterprise environments.”
NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro— A New Way of Looking at Things
Digital content creation (DCC) Artists, product designers, and physicians can see their ‘world’ in 3D, with perspectives that are significantly richer than traditional two-dimensional views. Physicians, for example, can now view volumetric scans like ultrasound in 3D. Businesses looking to provide large scale visualizations such as popular video walls now have a reliable, enabling technology to deliver that kind of experience.
“NVIDIA is clearly a leader in the field of 3D visualization and has been working on Stereoscopic 3D technology since 1999. With their launch of a professional 3D solution, this technology can easily move beyond the entertainment viewing experience for individual consumers,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. “By providing large scale visualization capabilities and remote management capabilities, NVIDIA is pioneering 3D technology for the enterprise, opening the door for professional users and large scale visualization system integrators to utilize 3D in ways not thought of before.”
Key features of NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Pro stereoscopic solutions include:
- Active shutter glasses technology that delivers a true progressive image, which preserves the highest quality texture detail and text;
- Rechargeable batteries with 20 hours of continuous operation;
- Wide range of panel and projector support, and;
- A wide range of professional application support.
Professional applications for NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro already available
Companies such as Siemens Healthcare, Agilent, Cineform, and RTT are already embracing NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro technology as an essential element of new solutions they’ve recently announced:
Siemens Healthcare is now shipping its syngo.fourSight Workplace Imaging Management Solution for Obstetrics. It provides off-system 3D/4D volume manipulation and 2D image and clip review for a variety of Siemens’ most powerful ultrasound platforms, assisting in communication with doctors, surgeons, and patients. It may also improve paternal-fetal bonding, and aid in treatment or pre- and post-natal surgical planning.
“Our syngo.fourSight Workplace software, combined with new NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro technology and the latest NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions, makes this an even more compelling image management tool for enhanced patient throughput and department workflow in obstetrical ultrasound,” said Barbara Del Prince, worldwide segment manager for OB/GYN, Siemens Healthcare. “Doctors, hospitals and imaging centers now have the most powerful, comprehensive and innovative 3D imaging solution toolset available for volume image manipulation.”
Pricing and Availability
NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Pro stereoscopic solutions will be available in October directly from NVIDIA and from authorized resellers such as PNY Technologies at MSRPs of $349 (USD) for the glasses, and $399 (USD) for the RF transmitter hub. For more information on NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro, please visit: www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-professional-users.html.
Graphics professionals can experience 3D Vision Pro stereoscopic solutions at SIGGRAPH 2010 in the
NVIDIA booth, #717, South Hall, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, from July 27-29, 2010. To learn
more, visit: www.nvidia.com/quadro. Follow NVIDIA Quadro on YouTube, and Twitter: @NVIDIAQuadro.
OptiX2, SceniX6, cgToolkit3:
SIGRRAPH 2010, LOS ANGELES — July 27, 2010 — NVIDIA (Booth #717) announced today new releases of its Application Acceleration Engines (AXE), optimized for the newest Quadro® graphics processing units (GPUs) based on the company’s new NVIDIA® Fermi architecture, which were launched today.
These latest versions, designed for the professional software development community, include: NVIDIA SceniX™ 6, NVIDIA Cg Tooklit™ 3, and NVIDIA OptiX™ 2. Also on display today is the iray® renderer from mental images®, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NVIDIA, being shown in commercial applications as well as a breakthrough GPU cloud-based rendering solution.
“These new Engine releases enable groundbreaking applications to come to market far faster than before,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “And they open the door to a new generation of software which combines advanced visualization with high performance computing and simulation.”
NVIDIA Accelerates the Pace of Development
SceniX 6, Cg Toolkit 3, OptiX 2 technology, and iray rendering solutions from mental images, offer application developers a host of new features and benefits that they can offer to end-users across a broad range of markets, including medical imaging, automotive styling, architectural design and energy exploration. New features and benefits include:
NVIDIA SceniX 6
- New Bezier Patch geometry class, using Cg tessellation programs for the smoothest of surfaces on NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs;
- OptiX 2 support for faster, interactive ray tracing;
- Continued improvements in overall performance and fidelity, and;
- Future support for iray by mental images.
NVIDIA Cg Toolkit 3
- New tessellation programs, allowing displacement and procedural surfaces to dynamically adapt their tessellation in real-time on the latest NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs, and;
- OpenGL 4 and DirectX 11 level of programmability for the latest in portable, cross platform effects.
NVIDIA OptiX 2
- Optimizations for new NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs, delivering up to 4X performance over previous generation (GT200) GPUs and >10X over G92;
- Support for all NVIDIA CUDA™ architecture-capable NVIDIA GPUs (G92 or later) on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX, and;
- Direct3D and fast interoperability in Direct3D and OpenGL; for flexible compositing and hybrid rendering opportunities.
iray from mental images
- Physically correct and fully deterministic global illumination rendering;
- Superb scaling between multiple NVIDIA Fermi architecture class GPUs on the same machine, and;
- Distributed rendering support for efficiently leveraging multiple Quadro and Tesla™ GPUs in a network.
Development Community Enthusiastic About New Engines
“We have found that our customers are very interested in how GPU acceleration will improve their rendering experiences, and NVIDIA engines are powering our development process to bring them compelling, new Lightworks solutions,” said Dave Hutchinson, Product Director at Lightwork Design Limited. “We found the OptiX ray tracing engine straightforward to implement, and have seen very impressive rendering speed-ups compared with traditional CPU implementations.”
“SceniX has been a foundation for our industry-leading Delta Gen styling and visualization product since its beginning,” said Ludwig Fuchs, CEO of Real Time Technologies Inc. “Each version of SceniX has enabled us to quickly provide important new functionality and performance to our highly discriminating customer base of automotive companies, and we see version 6 doing so once again.”
“iray has allowed us to easily add a rendering solution to our new Bunkspeed SHOT software, making it truly state of the art in both photorealism and speed,” said Philip Lunn, CEO of Bunkspeed. “The breakthrough new Quadro GPUs, in combination with Bunkspeed SHOT is poised to revolutionize the creative process for our customers in design and advertising.”
Availability
NVIDIA Application Acceleration Engines are available immediately to developers for download. OptiX, SceniX and the Cg Toolkit are free to acquire and deploy. For more information, please visit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/application_acceleration_engines.html. iray is licensed from mental images for commercial use. For more information, please visit: http://www.mentalimages.com/products/iray.html.
Graphics professionals can experience these new Engines at SIGGRAPH 2010 in the NVIDIA booth
#717, South Hall, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, from July 27-29, 2010. To learn more, visit:
www.nvidia.com/quadro. Follow NVIDIA Quadro on YouTube, and Twitter: @NVIDIAQuadro.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999. Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from tablets and portable media players to notebooks and workstations. NVIDIA’s expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. The company holds more than 1,100 U.S. patents, including ones covering designs and insights which are fundamental to modern computing. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.
