Nvidia Tesla GPGPU

[Hrvoje Simic]

New product line from Nvidia. The launch of GPGPU based cards.
Entering a new era in HPC.

1.5GB DDR3 per GPU
over 500 gigaflops per GPU

link (http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html)

[Mark L. Pederson]

did you say 2 Terraflops ....

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/20/nvidia-launches-tesla-gpus-are-the-new-cpus/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_gpu_processor.html

i just love NVDA - closed at almost $44 Friday - I say $60 by NAB -

[Cail Young]

I could have sworn that said Nikola Tesla.

Awesome.

[Priyesh P.]

But what is it good for? why do they call it a supercomputing plattform? is it something where I could plug my Flame into and do all compositing in full 4K rez in realtime?

[Simon Blackledge]

Its something engineers and scientists could use.

Flame.. no. But Autodesk could make use of it possibly.

Would be nice with Color maybe.. in float :))

[Mark L. Pederson]

Well ... IMHO Apple BUYING Nvidia is not so far fetched ....

read this - BETWEEN the lines ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/mergersNews/idUSWNAS202320070521?rpc=77

....but hey, what do I know??:wink:

[Tom Lowe]

"This is madness!"

[Ace]

"This is madness!"

This is Dataaaa!

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Word on the street is the new 3D Studio Max and Mental Ray 4 will use the new Geforce 8/CUDA tech to hardware accelerate rendering.

I'm sure AME is working on those flame render times as well. GPU acceleration is the future.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Word on the street is the new 3D Studio Max and Mental Ray 4 will use the new Geforce 8/CUDA tech to hardware accellerate rendering.

We'll see... I've heard that one before. But there's always a chance and I'll be a happy guy if Mental Ray and other renderers start to really use GPU acceleration.

[Mark L. Pederson]

We'll see... I've heard that one before. But there's always a chance and I'll be a happy guy if Mental Ray and other renderers start to really use GPU acceleration.

one word ... LUXOLOGY

[Bruce Allen]

Seeing as nVidia already has the guys who wrote the Renderman-compatible renderer BMRT, this is a logical step. As far as I know, Gelato is nVidia's current attempt - almost there, but not quite.

Bear in mind that AFAIK the current iteration of the Tesla can't do dual-precision floating point, so porting Mental Ray to it might not be the simplest thing in the world. They'll probably wait for the DP update that's coming soon, according to the nVidia press release.

But yes, I can't wait for full GPU based rendering. It's so close! Flame on the desktop, with Mental Ray rolled in, and pseudo realtime performance. It's less than 10 years away. Hence I decided to buy as few computers as possible until that point ;) Matte boxes and lenses, all the way...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Curran Giddens]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/gz_home.html

I didn't know what BMRT (I did know what RenderMan is though) was so I did a search and found the entire history of the program:

http://www.renderman.org/RMR/OtherLinks/blackSIGGRAPH.html

I can't wait to be able to do on the desktop (or deskside) what would have taken an entire render farm to do just a couple years ago. I don't have much experience in 3d, but some of the render times I've heard are crazy.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

one word ... LUXOLOGY

I hope you're right, but Modo still has a long way to go until I can use it as my dominant render tool -- full animation tools, bones, deformations, etc.. I can't wait to get 301 with the new sculpting tools and other goodies. Another big step in the right direction.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't have much experience in 3d, but some of the render times I've heard are crazy.

Render times can be crazy, but the latest CPUs have made huge strides in that area. We have also seen a lot of better render algorithms and approaches being used over the last couple years. Renderers like Mental Ray, FPrime, etc.. are using some pretty sick methods to pull off GI (global illumination / radiosity) at some astonishing speeds. Some even give real-time feedback when setting up lights as the render starts to generate on the fly.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I don't think Gelato is really intended as a competitive mainstream renderer. I don't see why Nvidia would want to dump their resources into such a competitive industry.

I can see why Nvidia would want to provide a concept demonstration to encourage others to integrate NVidia specific tech into all of their renderers.

I would say the chances that Mental Ray is GPU accellerated are > 75% in the next release. Max developers have been *very* vocal that they are settling for nothing less than a 10x perfromance increase in many areas. GPU acceleration seems like the logical assault point to make that happen.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I don't think Gelato is really intended as a competitive mainstream renderer. I don't see why Nvidia would want to dump their resources into such a competitive industry.

I agree... I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish with Gelato. it's like an overpriced demo of tech they want to license. I played with the free version a while back (v1.5 I think). At that time on a 5950U or FX4500 card, it wasn't any quicker than rendering off the CPU with Worley's FPrime. I would assume with newer GPUs and further optimizations, it should be a lot faster now.

[galexander]

why would anyone want a machine that only does single-precision? you might as well strap together some Xbox's. great for display but horrible for number crunching.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I don't think Gelato is really intended as a competitive mainstream renderer. I don't see why Nvidia would want to dump their resources into such a competitive industry.

I can see why Nvidia would want to provide a concept demonstration to encourage others to integrate NVidia specific tech into all of their renderers.

I would say the chances that Mental Ray is GPU accellerated are > 75% in the next release. Max developers have been *very* vocal that they are settling for nothing less than a 10x perfromance increase in many areas. GPU acceleration seems like the logical assault point to make that happen.

Well I was way off on the CUDA enabled Mental Ray but did anyone else notice that NVIDIA bought Mental Images last year?

Didn't see that coming.

[Deanan]

I agree... I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish with Gelato. it's like an overpriced demo of tech they want to license.

Rumor at the time was that Pixar was going agressively after the ex-pixar Exluna guys for trade secret / patent violations and Nvidia bailed them out while acquiring them. They got alot of very smart guys but Gelato never caught on because they charged too much for it (and it didn't fit well into renderfarms).