Maybe it is a stereotypical guy thing, but how could you not enjoy watching these virtual crash test simulations!
In these two videos Altair Engineering uses the new ATI FirePro V8800 with HyperWorks to simulate virtual crash tests of this Ford Explorer & Taurus in near real-time. The frontal crash simulation vehicles have millions of polygons so this is impressive technically as well as visually!
HyperWorks has been in the HPC news recently for achieving processing breakthroughs to for industries like car companies, developing products that require complex virtual prototype testing to address and improve crashworthiness, consumer safety, reliability and quality.
Altair HyperWorks was also recently optimized and certified for use with the FirePro line.
The certification of FirePro accelerators by software application vendors assures professional engineers, designers and animators that the FirePro line delivers a stable and high performance workstation graphics environment on both Windows and Linux platforms. Certification is one of the big differences between consumer and professional graphics cards. (see video).
Altair Engineering and SpaceClaim are the two latest application ISVs to be certified for the FirePro line
Altair Engineering is one of the key strategic players in engineering simulation CAE and HPC space – they are part of all workflows in the major automotive OEMs in the 3 regions.
SpaceClaim leads the 3D Direct Modeling market by delivering break-through product and technology. The founder of SpaceClaim is the father of Pro/E and SolidWorks: Michael Payne. ANSYS just selected SpaceClaim as their front end modeler.
The ATI FirePro RG220 graphics card is an integrated graphics card that includes display compression and IP transmission. It compresses dual-display graphic data at the host and outputs it over a regular IP network to a remote thin client device.
If you listen past the marketing hype, this video is actually pretty informative, describing how the card works, where it fits in, and who it will benefit. It’s a real cloud computing solution to offer serious graphics power to “thin clients”. Think small, quiet, cool, and secure. Wonder if I could use this for serious graphics on my iPad?
AMD will give a first-look at it's latest high end graphics card (all we know is it "will expand on the FirePro V8800") at IBC (Hall 7, J30). In addition they will show the FirePro RG220 Remote Workstation Graphics card (think low-power and energy efficiency for cloud computing graphics).
FirePro technology will be shown in partner demos including with VizRT, StudioGPU, Ventuz, MainConcept, Dell, HP, Barco, The Foundry, and Planar. Highlights include:
HP and Dell - workstations will be available to view on the stand, including AMD support for 30-bit colour in Adobe Photoshop with the HP Dream Color monitor
VizRT showcasing its broadcast graphics solutions with a 12-screen video wall demo
StudioGPU showcasing its MachStudio Pro (version 2?) real-time 3D graphics solution
The very cool 92 million pixel video wall that blew people away at SIGGRAPH 2010, will be making an appearance at IBC 2010 in the AMD booth #7.J30, according to Vizrt.
If you haven’t already heard about the wall, hi-resolution, complex 3D animations play across 40 displays, powered by 10 ATI FirePro V8800s with Eyefinity and Viz Video Wall ER. Each display in the wall has a resolution of 1920x1200, giving a total resolution of 19200 x 4800 pixels or 92 megapixels.
The Viz Engine processes are synchronized via the ATI FirePro S400 Synchronization module (Genlock and Framelock), distributing a unique frame counter to all Viz Engines, in order to guarantee the same animation progress on all 40 displays.
More than 50% increase in performance for ATI FirePro V8800 on the 3ds Max subset of the SPECviewperf 10 benchmark, as well as a 40% gain on the Catia subset, a 20% gain on the Pro E subset and more than 20% gain on the overall composite.
Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the Lightwave subset of the new SPECviewperf® 11 benchmark, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 62% performance gain and the ultra-high ATI FirePro V8800 achieving up to 81% gain, compared to the previous driver.
Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the SolidWorks subset of SPECviewperf
11, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 43% performance gain and the ultra high-end ATI FirePro V8800 achieving a 63% gain compared to the previous driver.
AMD today announced the first OpenGL ES 2.0 driver for desktop computing environments specifically to support the WebGL standard for plugin-free 3D content on the web. Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), and Opera (Opera) are the current browser contributors/supporters of the WebGL standard.
The new driver also enables software developers to use desktop PC equipped with Radeon or FirePro graphics (as opposed to embedded systems) to create applications based on OpenGL ES 2.0 for smartphones and tablets e.g. iOS4 and Android devices. This will make it easier for developers to port software applications between PCs and handhelds, avoiding exclusive use emulators or translation layers to get OpenGL ES 2.0 code up and running.
The beta OpenGL ES 2.0 driver is available now and will be supported on all currently available AMD graphics products introduced since 2008, including ATI Radeon desktop, ATI Mobility Radeon, and ATI FirePro professional graphics cards
Updated 11 am Jul 26: From Stumbling Ahead blog:
This is not an emulator or some sort of layer on top of OpenGL, but a full implementation of OpenGL ES accessed through EGL. Why is this important? How will this make your PC experience better? There are three reasons.
First, OpenGL ES on all modern AMD graphics desktops gives developers a unified environment. Game developers can write one 3D pipeline that can run on an HTC Evo, an Apple iPad, and on desktop and laptop PCs.
Second, this change will make web experiences faster and richer in the immediate future. WebGL is based on OpenGL ES. Web browsers will be able to use OpenGL ES directly on AMD hardware instead of having to translate every call to some other API first.
Third, mobile developers can create mobile content first directly on a PC without having to wrangle with SDKs or emulators to make sure their code functions correctly on OpenGL ES. This makes developers lives easier and speeds up the whole development process.
Look for OpenGL ES to make a big impact in bridging the gap with mobile devices and making 3D graphics more accessible.
Rob Rodriguez of Troublemaker Studios is behind the new movie Predators, coming tomorrow July 9. Predators was made by a six-person production team each using an AMD 6-core Istanbul CPU workstation powered by an ATI FirePro V8800 GPU. TroubleMaker Studios has a history of using ATI FirePro cards to develop their work including Spy Kids sequels, Planet Terror and Sin City.
In this latest film of the Predator franchise, a group of elite warriors are brought together on an alien planet… as prey, for a new breed of alien Predators. See the trailer below.
“Within the workstation and professional graphics world, ATI is currently dominating the scene. They are providing consumers with a full product line of FirePro cards that span the entire performance spectrum, with prices ranging from $109 all the way up to $1499. Much like the desktop market, ATI is months ahead of NVIDIA in getting products launched and available for purchase.”
“On average, the V7800 consistently performed within 11% of the V8800 in both synthetic and real world benchmarks. That point alone is impressive to us, especially when you look at the cost of each card ($799 vs $1499). But it also finished ahead of the V8750 in 8 of the 11 benchmarks we ran, trumping last year’s flagship model and making it a legitimate high end workstation graphics card. Our SANDRA GPGPU testing put the V7800 ahead of the older V8750 by 65% in Compute Shader results and 40% for Stream processing performance. In many ways, the V7800 delivered and workstation professionals should take note of what ATI was able to do with a single slot cooling solution.”
In reference to the 38800 and 4800: “we expected to compare the two entry level cards to one another, but the results pushed us in a different direction. Why? Because the V4800 outperformed expectations during our real world testing. This affordable GPU did not perform like an entry level product. Looking at our SPECviewperf scores, the V4800 came within roughly 6% of the performance displayed by the V7800. On the other hand, our synthetic OpenGL and GPGPU benchmarks told a different story. Cinebench showed the V7800 to be almost twice as fast as the V4800, while SANDRA scored it over three times faster.”
FireUser.com is a community resource for visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies, discuss support issues, as well as influence the features and direction of the FireGL and FirePro accelerator line.
