Processing power for RED!

S

Shaw

Veteran
Hey guys,

nVidia has just announced that they will be selling what amounts to a GPU render farm. Nice! For the same exact price as red you can now work with 4K red files. I wonder how much you will be able to do real time with this beast? And I can only imagine the painful power bill this would produce!

Nvidia intros 80 billion pixels/s graphics machine

By Wolfgang Gruener
Published Tuesday 1st August 2006 13:52 GMT


Boston (MA) - If you wondered about Nvidia's business options once ATI has been acquired by AMD, here's one idea: High-end graphics.
Nvidia says it has achieved a "quantum leap" in visual compute density, packed in what the company claims is the world's first "visual computing system." Called the Quadro Plex 1000, is a professional graphics machine that is offered in a desktop or 3U rackmount configuration, which are designed to provide higher graphics performance for 12-megapixel HD video (4K) processing, 3D styling and design, scientific and medical visualization, oil and gas exploration, or visual simulation and training.
The one "node" can house up to eight Quadro FX graphics chips in two Plex 1000 systems that are connected via SLI and are supported by an AMD- or Intel-based 32-bit or 64-bit host system running Windows or Linux. According to Nvidia, a node can achieve up to 64x full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA), deliver a performance of up to 148 megapixels on 16 synchronized digital-output channels and eight HD SDI channels. The firm says that the fill rate reaches 80 billion pixels/s while the geometry performance is rated at seven billion vertices/s.
Nvidia plans to ship Quadro Plex systems beginning in September for prices starting around $17,500.
Click to expand...

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/08/01/nvidia_quadro_plex_1000/print.html
 
Haha nice!

Other than the obvious 4K coolness just imagine what sort of frame rates this thing would give gamers. :eek: Of course, you would have to be one serious gamer to drop 17.5K on this... but if you had one for work and found it useful for games as well.... :thumbsup:
 
You should check NVIDIA's specs on the Quadro Plex 1000.

Pricing starts at $17,500, but only Model III handles SDI Modes.

This makes me guess that Model III will be about $30k

Then there is the question of what software will support this. Most likely they will provide an API, and leave it up to the enduser to write custom code.

Technical Specifications

Supporting Platforms

* NVIDIA Quadro® Plex officially certified system or platform
* Microsoft® Windows® XP (64-bit and 32-bit)
* Microsoft Windows 2000 (32-bit)
* Linux® - Full OpenGL® implementation, complete with NVIDIA and ARB extensions (64-bit and 32-bit)

NVIDIA Quadro GPU Architecture

* 128-bit color precision (IEEE fp32 bit per component)
* 3D volumetric texture support
* Fully programmable GPU (OpenGL2.0/DirectX 9.0c class)

Display Resolution Support

* Analog displays up to 2048x1536 @ 85 Hz
* Dual-link DVI-I outputs - drive digital displays at resolutions up to 3840 x 2400 @ 24Hz
* Native support for Sony 4K SXRD™ large venue projector

SDI Modes (Model III only)

* Transparent Mode – work with any existing application using clone and dualview modes
o 2 channel fill
o 8-bit
+ RGB 4:4:4
+ YCrCb 4:2:2 or 4:4:4
* Extended Mode – integrate into applications using NVIDIA SDI API
o 4 channel fill or 2 channel fill + 2 channel key
o 8-, 10-, 12-bit
+ RGB 4:4:4
+ YCrCb 4:2:2 or 4:4:4
+ 2x YCrCb 4:2:2 + 4:2:2
+ YCrCbA 4:2:2:4
+ RGBA 4:4:4:4 (8-bit only)
 
There is already a system that supports 4k. The quantel IQ does it in real time with no proxies. This box seems to be marketed more at high end graphics and VFX (like getting a Linux version and putting Shake on it and working in uncompressed 4k with an HD broadcast monitor) I'm sure you could design an editing system for it, and maybe it will be used for 4k assembly at some point. It still doesn't really mention what kind of storage would go along with it. And the storage will probably cost more than the box.
 
So its started in earnest...........4k. Well based on the more usual high end graphic cards the price might well drop right down in a fairly short space of time who knows?

As others point out elsewhere, once 4k becomes usable to those lower down the scale what will the big boys do.....3D without spectacles ?

20 years i think it took for VCRs to get below £100.00 Five years for DVDs to get below £100.00 Three years for DVD recorders to get from £1,000 to £200. Consumer camcorders going in the same direction (lower).Three years for HD cameras to get below £1,000. Graphic cards getting faster and ever more powerful each year. Is it me getting older or is technology moving ever faster as each year goes by, both probably.

Yet with all these new developments here in the UK we are still about four years before they switch off analogue.:(

I guess some things take time.......plenty of time

Michael
 
I'm really starting to think in an industrialized RED sense of design, I dig it! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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4K still seems like it's a bit far off, unless Apple announces some kind of display/software/hardware support soon. But I'd be just as interested in the new developments with 2K. Besides the Kona 3, has there been any updates on the 2K process in the meantime while we wait for 4K developments?
 
4k isnt a "do it yourself" format right now. And perhaps it wont be for at least another year. 2k though is only marginally larger than 1080, and with any given codec 2k is easily managed by most new systems in terms of bandwidth and process power. FCP 6 perhaps will have more solid 2k support, Vegas already supports 2k, and Aja Makes Xena 2k capture cards bundled with 2k workflow plugins for Adobe Premier.

Most.. and when i say most im talking 99%... of people will shoot RED at 2k or under for now.
 
What kind of data rates for high quality capture are we talking about? Will we have a Red codec when the camera ships or will it require capture to CineForm or other codecs?
 
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