NVIDIA Maximus Revolutionizes the Workstation

Big news from Nvidia today as their new “Maximus” system comes to light. First announced back at SIGGRAPH, it’s now available for public use. If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to do both GPU compute and rendering at the same time (Possibly using PhysX simulations with high-end rendering, or running GPU-accelerated CFD simulations combined with visualization) and found yourself dealing with complex driver configurations or dark incantations of system configurations to get it all to work, then Maximus is exactly the system you’ve been looking for.

“To those of us who have spent their careers focused on workstations, NVIDIA Maximus represents a revolution,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “Previous workstation architectures forced designers and engineers to do compute-intensive work and graphics- intensive work serially and often offline. They can now do them at the same time, on the same machine, allowing professionals to explore more ideas faster and converge quickly on the best possible answers.”

Done entirely in the driver, you can now buy a good graphics-card (Fermi-based NVidia Quadro, all the way down to the $200 Quadro 600) and match it with a nice NVidia Tesla card and let the driver map your processes entirely. Right now the matching is a bit naive, putting CUDA/OpenCL processes on the Tesla and DirectX/OpenGL processes on the Quadro, but that alone can offer a huge boost in performance by allowing both rendering and compute processes to operate in parallel at maximum power.

The system is already tested and approved for an impressive list of engineering & CAD tools like ANSYS, CATIA, and MATLAB, along with other tools like Adobe Premiere and Bunkspeed. For most of these tools, they’ve already got great GPU-accelerated compute aspects, and GPU-accelerated rendering features. Unfortunately, it’s almost always been either/or and never both at the same time. With the new Maximus drivers you can run both aspects at full-speed, without special configuration or dealing with special software settings.

They’ve also got a great list of OEM Hardware partners offering full support for hardware and software, all on day 1. Another great feature is their new adaptive power consumption. It’s no secret that NVidia cards can be tough on a power supply, and adding two to a machine can be a real strain. With the new Maximus system, you (or the Hardware OEM provider) can specify voltage limits, preventing the cards from drawing too much power and burning out your power supply.

It’s a complete package all-around. Get the full press release, along with some great demonstration videos of Maximus in action, after the break.

NVIDIA Maximus Revolutionizes the Workstation
Breakthrough Technology Delivers New Era of Speed and Productivity for Millions of Design and Creative Professionals
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nov. 14, 2011 — After 25 years of design and creative professionals anticipating a workstation that simultaneously performs complex analysis and visualization, NVIDIA announced today its arrival, with the introduction of NVIDIA® MaximusTM technology.
The new offering unleashes productivity and creativity, dramatically accelerating work by enabling a single system for the first time to simultaneously handle interactive graphics and the compute-intensive number crunching associated with the simulation or rendering of the results. These previously needed to be done in separate steps or on separate systems.
NVIDIA Maximus achieves this by bringing together the professional 3D graphics capability of NVIDIA Quadro® professional graphics processing units (GPUs) with the massive parallel-computing power of the NVIDIA TeslaTM C2075 companion processor—under a unified technology that transparently assigns work to the right processor and is certified by industry leading application vendors.
“To those of us who have spent their careers focused on workstations, NVIDIA Maximus represents a revolution,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “Previous workstation architectures forced designers and engineers to do compute-intensive work and graphics- intensive work serially and often offline. They can now do them at the same time, on the same machine, allowing professionals to explore more ideas faster and converge quickly on the best possible answers.”
With NVIDIA Maximus-enabled applications – such as those from Adobe, ANSYS, Autodesk, Bunkspeed, Dassault Systèmes and MathWorks – GPU compute work is assigned to run on the NVIDIA Tesla companion processor. This frees up the NVIDIA Quadro GPU to handle graphics functions, ensuring the quality and performance demanded by professional users.
“The real advantage of the Maximus technology is flexibility and increased productivity,” said Tim Ong, vice president of Mechanical Engineering for Sunnyvale, CA-based Liquid Robotics. “Allowing each engineer to do multiple things at once is transformative for our workflow. It’s a tremendous tool to allow my engineers to be flexible, to multitask, and to be more productive because they’re not waiting on computational power.”
NVIDIA Maximus Technology Immediately Available
The world’s leading workstation OEMs – including HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Fujitsu – are all offering workstations featuring NVIDIA Maximus technology, available for configuration and purchase immediately.
NVIDIA Maximus desktop workstation configurations start with the pairing of the NVIDIA Quadro 600 ($199 MSRP, USD) + NVIDIA Tesla C2075 ($2,499 MSRP, USD).
Quotes
Product Design, Styling and Visualization
“Autodesk’s 3ds Max 2012 has received top scores by reviewers, and one of the reasons they cite is the new iray photorealistic renderer from NVIDIA. We’ve taken this to another level with our announcement of the ActiveShade integration with iray – giving our subscription users an interactive rendering experience – especially if they are using an NVIDIA Quadro GPU, or the new NVIDIA Maximus solution that’s up to 9X faster than a single CPU.”
-Ken Pimentel, director, Media Design, Autodesk
“Bunkspeed PRO 2012 combines Bunkspeed Shot PRO and Bunkspeed Move PRO into one easy to use interactive ray tracing package built on CUDA powered NVIDIA iray. NVIDIA Maximus powered workstations allow designers, engineers, marketers and architects to render their 3D models with Bunkspeed PRO up to 8x faster than on CPUs alone, with a whole new level of realism and interactivity.”
-Philip Lunn, founder and CEO, Bunkspeed
“By harnessing the power of GPU computing we have been able to create a more productive, high-performance, interactive user experience and, at the same time, dramatically increase the realism of visualization tools available for designers and engineers within CATIA V6. With NVIDIA Maximus, users will be able to experience the full power of these new visualization tools in their product design workflow.”
-Xavier Melkonian, director, CATIA Shape Domain, Dassault Systèmes
Engineering Simulation
“GPU computing can dramatically accelerate ANSYS engineering software simulations on workstations, in some cases doubling the number of simulations that can be considered and helping customers to adopt more pervasive use of engineering simulation. With NVIDIA Maximus platforms widely available, enterprises can now more easily take advantage of ANSYS at their desk for both interactive and computationally intensive tasks.”
-Barbara Hutchings, director of strategic partnerships at ANSYS
Digital Video Content Creation
“Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5.5 and the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs continue to lead the industry with exceptional performance in non-linear editing. NVIDIA Maximus enables video professionals to create complex, multiple-layer projects faster, further increasing their productivity and empowering their creativity.”
-Bill Roberts, director of professional video and audio product management, Adobe
Technical Computing
“MATLAB users want to take advantage of GPUs to achieve significant speed-up of their applications quickly and easily, without making major changes to their MATLAB code. The wide availability of pre-qualified NVIDIA Maximus systems for MATLAB gives our users access to commodity platforms that deliver great productivity.”
-Loren Dean, director of Engineering, MATLAB Products, MathWorks
Workstation OEMs
“HP’s Z Workstations meet the needs of some of the most compute-intensive industries in the world. With NVIDIA Maximus technology, HP is providing a powerful, new performance solution that will enable our customers to design and analyze more efficiently, ultimately increasing ROI.”
-Jeff Wood, vice president, Worldwide Marketing, Commercial Solutions, HP HP entry-level Z400 and top-of-the line Z800 workstations are available now worldwide.
“NVIDIA Maximus enables our customers to accelerate their visualization and complex parallel workloads. When combined with Dell Precision workstation solutions, our design, research and digital content creation customers can increase their interactivity, productivity and creative freedom.”
– Greg Weir, marketing director, Dell Precision Workstation Product and ISV Marketing
Dell Precision T5500, R5500, and T7500 are available now worldwide.1
“Application acceleration speeds up the design process and product delivery, and with NVIDIA Maximus on Lenovo ThinkStations, users have the parallel processing power they need to boost productivity, creativity, and time-to-market. NVIDIA Maximus-class ThinkStation S20, C20, and D20 workstations transform workflows with computing and visualization capabilities that empower engineers, designers and digital content creators to achieve amazing results exponentially faster.”
– Rob Herman, director of Product and Vertical Solutions, ThinkStation Business Unit, Lenovo
Lenovo ThinkStation S20, C20 and D20 workstations are available now worldwide.
“Our advanced and superior line of Fujitsu CELSIUS workstations, including our CELSIUS M and R series, become even more powerful and versatile performers with NVIDIA Maximus technology. Our customers demand the most innovative technology for driving the new generation of high- performance 3D modeling, animation, real-time visualization, analysis, and simulation applications–NVIDIA Maximus-powered CELSIUS workstations provide the customized visualization plus computation performance they need.”
-Dieter Heiss, head of Workplace Systems at Fujitsu Technology Solutions
Fujitsu CELSIUS M470, R570 and R670 workstations are available now in EMEAI and Japan.
For more information about NVIDIA Maximus Technology, visit: www.nvidia.com/maximus. Follow NVIDIA Workstation/Quadro on YouTube and Twitter: @NVIDIAQuadro.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) awakened the world to computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999. Today, its processors power a broad range of products from smart phones to supercomputers. NVIDIA’s mobile processors are used in cell phones, tablets and auto infotainment systems. PC gamers rely on GPUs to enjoy spectacularly immersive worlds. Professionals use them to create visual effects in movies and design everything from golf clubs to jumbo jets. And researchers utilize GPUs to advance the frontiers of science with high-performance computing. The company holds more than 2,100 patents worldwide, including ones covering ideas essential to modern computing. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.