Winners of AMD FirePro W5000 and Dell Precision M4700 FirePro mobile workstation at Develop3D Live

Congratulation to Alex Green and Shaun Childs-Irwin who won the AMD FirePro W5000 card and Dell Precision M4700 FirePro mobile workstation at last weeks Develop3D Live event.  Both AMD and Dell were conference sponsors with AMD FirePro technology represented in demos and presentations from Dell, LightWorks, Siemens, PTC, NTCADCAM and other leading product development companies.

AMD FirePro pics from zSpace’s zCon 2013 -  the world’s first interactive 3D computing conference

Last week, AMD FirePro attended zCon 2013, the world’s first interactive 3D computing conference! In addition to the booth featuring a FirePro W9000 running Creo 2.0 (with OIT) and a zSpace scene on the FirePro W600,  AMD’s Tianyun Ni presented Virtual Reality in a Box and the AMD FirePro Technologies.

APU13 - AMD Developer Summit Nov. 11-14, 2013 in San Jose, CA

APU13, the AMD Developer Summit 2013 will be held Nov. 11-14, 2013 in San Jose, CA at the McEnery Convention Center. The 3rd annual developer summit will draw the architects and pioneers of the heterogeneous computing era, spanning silicon design, software development and tools, academia and emerging technologies.

The APU13 agenda includes two new programs this year:

• The summit will feature a series of updates from HSA Foundation members that are collectively working to build a standards-based heterogeneous compute (HC) ecosystem. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation and enables high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption. Additionally, HSA supports a diverse set of high-level programming languages, thereby creating the next foundation in general purpose computing;
• APU13 will also hold its first AMD Ventures Innovation Summit to highlight software and application development companies that utilize and expand uses for AMD solutions.

Call for Presentation Proposals

AMD invites pioneers of next-generation software and the rapidly growing field of heterogeneous computing to share their latest work and research findings in the form of presentations. Presenters will have an opportunity to advocate new methodologies and paradigms, garner support for industry standards, and network with developers, innovators and academics who will help define the course of this technology. Presentation proposals are invited on the following topics:

• Heterogeneous Computing
• Web Technologies
• Cloud Computing – Servers & Data Center
• Gaming and Consumer Graphics
• Innovative Client Experiences
• Multimedia Processing
• Professional Graphics and Visual Computing
• Programming Languages and Models
• Programming Tools
• Security

Presentation proposals must be submitted by May 10, 2013. All proposals will be reviewed by an APU13 board composed of researchers, academics and practitioners in the field. Selected candidates will be notified on or before June 7, 2013.

See AMD 2013 Developer Summit press release for more details.

Test drive the latest V11 of FEMAP without having to leave your office.

You are invited to attend a live, instructor-led virtual test drive that will allow you to experience FEMAP with NX Nastran first hand.

Date & Time: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT
Instructor: Chris Teague, Saratech Application Engineer

If you are thinking about upgrading or purchasing FEMAP, this is an excellent opportunity to for you to try before you buy. In this free offering you will get access to the full version of FEMAP with NX Nastran as well as Dynamic Response and Design Optimization. There are no restrictions on the number of saves, model sizes or other factors that would limit your ability to simulate and analyze complete product designs.

Using FEMAP's digital simulation capabilities you can:

• Significantly speed up the design process by bringing simulation closer to design and reducing time-to-market.
• Reduce the need for costly prototypes and testing, saving time and money.
• Perform failure analysis that improves product performance and reliability, reducing costly recalls.
• Evaluate and optimize designs to minimize material use, investigate use of alternative materials and perform trade-off studies to evaluate differing designs
• Experience a standalone engineering analysis environment that can exchange data with any CAD system and simulate using all major commercial solvers.

Attending the event also qualifies you for the opportunity to win an AMD FirePro W5000 Professional Graphics Card!

Registration is required, so reserve your Virtual Test Drive seat now at: FEMAP Virtual Test Drive.

Why FEMAP and FirePro?
Siemens PLM worked with AMD FirePro to implement VBO's (Vertex Buffer Objects) in Femap 11 CAE software for product development, simulation and analysis. With the new VBO technology implementation, dynamic rotation of large, complex models is at least five times faster than the previous version when running on the AMD FirePro W5000 and W7000 (see AMD FirePro collaborates w/ Siemens PLM to implement VBO and deliver 5X speed up in Femap 11.

Webinar: Uncompromised Quality of Graphics in Remote Workstation Deployments

Teradici and AMD are hosting a webinar Tuesday, Apr 30, 2013 -12pm EST/9am PST.

Looking to remote workstation experiences for employees who need high quality graphics performance, including full multi-monitor and video support?

• How financial services organizations, schools, media and entertainment and computer aided design/engineering companies can benefit from remote graphics deployments
• How the AMD FirePro™ R5000 remote graphics, featuring the TERA2240, can deliver high quality graphics without compromise, anywhere on the corporate network
• How Florida Atlantic University is able to meet its energy saving goals and deliver a robust computing experience for its students

Speakers:
Olivier Favre, Director of Server Solutions, Teradici
Mohamed Jivraj, Product Manager, AMD
Mahesh Neelakanta, Director Technical Services Group, College of Engineering & Computer Science<br />

Develop3D Live 2013 reads like a who’s who in product design technology

Develop3D Live is the place to be this week if you are into the latest in product development technology.  More than 1400 product development professionals are attending (this number does not include speakers or press or exhibitors).  As GFXSpeak notes, the list of attendees reads like a who’s who of product design technology innovation: e.g. McClaren Racing, Rolls Royce, Triumph Designs, Formula One, Bosch, Volkswagen, Dyson, Airbus Olympus.

Speakers include Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, SolidWorks VP of research and development Gian Paolo Bassi,  Jon Hirschtick, founder of SolidWorks and current chairman of Belmont Technologies, Efrain Rovira, ED Dell Precision Workstations, Chris Randles, CEOP SpaceClaim, Joe Graney, Dir of engineering at Santa Cruz Bicycles, industrial designer Gustovo Fontana, and sustainable design expert Dr. Vicky Lofthouse, as well as speakers from Siemens, Proto Labs, Ansys, AMD FirePro and more. All will be presenting on Dell mobile workstations using AMD FirePro graphics.

AMD FirePro technology is prominently represented in demos and presentations from Dell, LightWorks, Siemens, PTC, and NTCADCAM.

A few pics from the show from today (Just an FYI, that 4th pic is Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk):

CPU, GPU or Both? Finding the right multi-processing approach for engineering applications

Desktop Engineering has published an article on CPU vs GPU computing for engineering and CAD.  The article discusses using the Open Standard OpenCL programming framework, as well as Nvidia’s proprietary Cuda option. OpenCL can be used to give an application access to a GPU for non-graphical computing , such as engineering data analysis or simulation. Importantly offers the ability to use both CPUs and GPUs in combination.

AMD has integrated OpenCL as its programming framework for its FirePro family of GPUs, as well as its CPU and APU offerings. As noted by BSN AMD’s focus on OpenCL puts them in a competitive advantage against Nvidia as many of the compute programs out there tend to run faster on AMD hardware if they are optimized correctly.

 

Pics from NAB 2013 AMD FirePro presence

If you are at NAB 2013, check out the AMD FirePro presence in the following booths:

Adobe booth #SL3910 - Premiere Pro 7 up to 6X faster when powered by AMD FirePro graphics using OpenCL

ASSIMILATE Inc. booth #SL12705 -showcasing SCRATCH 4K DI workflows using AMD FirePro SDI I/O connectivity

Autodesk booth #SL3316 multi-monitor 3ds Max and Maya 2013 workflows

bluefish444 booth #SL9721 showing low latency transfers between Epoch and AMD FirePro cards

Dell booth #S110LMR previewing Adobe Premiere Pro CS7 with AMD FirePro technology and OpenCL

Sony booth #C11001 multi-monitor Vegas Pro workflows

Ventuz booth #SL6830 Ventuz 4 multi-monitor display walls using AMD FirePro graphics

Pics from several of the booths below:

Sony Vegas Pro 12 multi-display workflows using Eyefinity

ASSIMILATE Scratch 4K workflows on AMD FirePro

AMD FirePro’s Melanie Ball was featured speaker at the Sony party

bluefish444 booth showing AMD FirePro

Autodesk Digital Entertainment Creation Suite using AMD FIrePro

What others are saying about the OpenCL acceleration of Adobe Premiere Pro on AMD FirePro and APUs

So I am not the only one excited by the announcement that AMD worked with Adobe to accelerate the next release of Premiere Pro using OpenCL on FirePro graphics and APUs.

“The performance increases are said to be so dramatic that with the proper hardware it should be possible to render DV, HD and even 4K Ultra HD fast enough for it to be done on the fly, real time. This is accomplished using OpenCL.” - Niels Broekhuijsen, Tom’s Hardware

“The performance improvements are, of course, substantial. On an A10-6800K processor with integrated graphics, AMD says OpenCL acceleration yields a 4.3x speedup when one applies a three-way color corrector filter to a 1080p video and exports that video to iDevice format. The quoted processing times are 46.6 seconds with OpenCL enabled and 246.1 seconds without.” - Cyril Kowaliski, The Tech Report

“For AMD, this is a huge development, as it effectively expands the potential number of Adobe Premiere Pro customers that run systems with AMD graphics and allows the company to compete more directly with NVIDIA in this space. AMD likely especially sees good things to come for its line of FirePro professional/workstation-class GPUs.” - Seth Colaner, Hot Hardware

“Anyhow, for AMD this is of course a big deal. While some other NLEs like Sony Vegas have supported hardware accelerated effects with their cards for some time, Premiere Pro represents a sizable part of the NLE market that they were previously locked out of. Especially since this lets AMD leverage their APU advantage, including both the consumer A-series and the rarely mentioned FirePro APUs. That the A-series is being supported is actually a big deal in and of itself since Premiere Pro CS6’s CUDA path only officially supports a small number of high-end NVIDIA consumer cards, so this marks a major broadening of support on Adobe’s part.” - Ryan Smith, AnandTech

“AMD can also show the difference between NVIDIA’s latest Kepler based Quadro workstation cards using CUDA and AMD FirePro cards featuring GCN architecture and using OpenCL accelerated effects. The performance increase varies by product but the more affordable solution, the FirePro W5000, is claimed to be 27% faster than NVIDIA’s Quadro K2000. At the same ~$499USD price point, that makes the FirePro a compelling option over the Quadro card, ostensibly a quarter more performance for free.” - James Prior, Rage 3D

“Even greater improvements are in store for users of AMD’s FirePro professional graphics cards. AMD outlines some examples in this blog post. By the looks of it, FirePro GPUs don’t just speed things up over plain-old software processing; they’re also quite a bit faster than Nvidia’s competing Quadro GPUs. AMD says it’s “kicking the butt” of the Quadro K4000 and K5000 in particular.” - Cyril Kowaliski, The Tech Report

Adobe Premiere Pro CS7, After Effects and SpeedGrade to support AMD FirePro OpenCL acceleration

Adobe today announced that they will be previewing the next generation of their flagship video tools including Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and SpeedGrade.

Important to these announcements are that each of these products (along with PhotoShop) will support OpenCL and OpenGL acceleration on AMD FirePro graphic cards. By working with AMD FirePro to use open standards (as opposed to proprietary soluitons i.e. Cuda), Adobe products will be accelerated on any modern graphics card (including any moves to mobile).

The chart below (from the FireProGraphics.com Adobe CS mini site) gives some initial results of how the next version of Premiere Pro performs when accelerated by AMD FirePro workstation graphics and OpenCL compared to CPU only and also compared to Nvidia Quadro workstation graphics and CUDA.  This test applied several high quality effects (filters) to video footage in real-time, such as color matching, adjustments to compensate for gamma irregularities and color shifts, color layering, primary and secondary color correction, including many effects from Adobe’s Lumetri Deep Color Engine. The test then measured the time to render the effects In and Out.

At NAB 2013 next week (April 8-11, 2013), Adobe plans to showcase the next version of Premiere Pro in its booth (#SL3910) running on AMD FirePro workstation graphics cards. Look for real-time video editing for quality as high as 4k Ultra HD, multi-stream and mixed format accelerated workflows, Eyefiniy multi-display and many accelerated effects.