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?
Cosworth has more than 40 years of experience supplying engines to Formula 1, and currently works alongside four independent teams in the 2010 FIA Formula One Championship. It is critical to Cosworth’s communications strategy that they have high-quality visualizations of the engines and high-performance electronics that it supplies. These enable Cosworth engineers, customers and fans to see the complex designs in a visually clear and accurate way.
Check out the video which clearly spells out the what and why of the ATI FirePro and Eyefinity choice.
Dell also features a Case Study since these were Dell Workstations!
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.
The AMD team is just back from several days at Siemens PLM Connection 2010. During the week of June 28, Dell and AMD joined forces with Saratech (the lead reseller of Siemens in North America).
Key to the exhibit was the demonstration of integrated Product Development cycle showing the complete PLM process including design to manufacturing through simulation and product data management (latest releases of NX, Teamcenter, FEMAP, and Solid Edge). The solution was showcasing Dell T5500, M6500 and R5400 remote workstation powered by ATI FirePro V7800 graphics and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology.
HotHardware recently completed a review of the V7800 noting “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.”
ATI FirePro V7800, V5800 and 4800 professional graphics cards are immediately available with the Dell Precision R5400, T1500, T3500, T5500 and T7500 Workstations for design engineers and digital content creation professionals. These cards all support ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology so a single graphics card can drive up to three independent 30’ displays. They of course, also provide full support for DirectX11, OpenGL 4.0 and OpenCL. These cards are rigorously and exactingly certified for over 90 of the leading CAD and DCC applications.
At the 2010 DS PLM Conference, held on June 11, Shanghai, China, over 300 VIPs from China’s largest manufacturing companies came to view ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology on the new FirePro line and embrace the conference tag line “Bring Innovation to Life with 3D”.
William Xia, Sr. of AMD presented the clsoing speech covering ATI FirePro solutions.
AMD is very strongly positioned in the PLM space. Check out the recent PLM MarketPlace blog regarding the a realistic 3D interactive view of a city using 3DVIA with a single ATI FirePro card driving 6 displays using Eyefinity technology.
Below is a video of 3DVia bringing a city to life using Eyefinity technology running on a single ATI FirePro V8800 at the DS 2010 Partner Summit (SwYm Conference).
This video interview with AMD's Allen Bourgoyne, at the AutoDesk One Team Conference back in early March, talks about the new line of ATI FirePro workstation graphics accelerators and specifically mentions the certification process. I often see mention on several graphics sites about modding FirePro drivers to work on their near-spec-equivalent Radeon consumer version, so I thought this might be a good place to talk about what certification means - really.
Both the Radeon and FirePro cards and drivers are tested for AutoCAD and other DCC/CAD application. But only the FirePro gets certified.
Certified means:
The card is tested extensively so that it operates as expected in the application using its driver - no unexpected clipping or unusual shading when viewing CAD objects. The driver makes specific assumptions about the board hardware, so even if a Radeon HD 5870 and a FirePro V8800 share 98% of the same hardware, the workstation driver and the certification is based on testing specifically for the professional hardware. So for example, the CAD- tuned performance with the FirePro V8800 assumes 2GB GDDR5 memory checking in at 1150MHz, support for the S400 Synchronization Module, clock differences, etc. With the Radeon card and drivers (modded or shipping), there is no guarantee of the performance - you simply have to accept that wire frames may peek out of shaded surfaces, and clipping can occur when multiple objects are animated. These artifacts simply don't occur when using the certified FirePro cards.
You get support. Buy a FirePro card and you have a direct line to support from both the CAD vendor and from ATI. This counts mostly when you are in the middle of a time-sensitive project and suddenly your card is not performing as you expected.
In both cases I think the key point is that for professional CAD, Medical imaging and DCC, the cost of the software and the FirePro workstation graphics card is in-material compared to the cost of the people running the software/hardware. If the modeler or artist is waiting for screen re-draws or experiences unpredictable rendering behavior, or can't get support, that’s productivity lost.
Note: the video interview is obviously pretty scripted, but the specific mention of certification made it worth sharing. The other thing that I found interesting was the use of the word Fusion...
Icronic reviews the ATI FirePro V8800 and compares it to the FirePro V7800, V5800, V4800, and V3800 as well at the Quadro FX3800, using Cinebench R10, Cinebench R11, and SPECViewPerf 10.
General takeaways:
- ATI has upped the ante of real time OpenGL performance in their newest generation of workstation GPUs
- The lightning quick performance and superb feature set are more than enough to offset the pangs of heat production and power use, so long as you have enough space to house the card. The addition of Eyefinity Multi-Display alone makes the V8800 a perfect solution for artists who spend too much time alt+tabbing through work. I can guarantee if you get a chance to work with the FirePro V8800, you will not be disappointed in any way. This card is spectacular.
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.
