At Bentley’s annual “Be Inspired” conference in Amsterdam, Greg Bentley told the audience that the ability to package Point Cloud data in 3D PDFs will be coming soon thanks to Bentley’s newly acquired point cloud capabilities.
i-Models have been available within Bentley applications as an exchange tool (an i-Model is a container for data exchange and enables bidirectional feedback). But now CAD users will be create iModels and exchange them as 3D PDFs for use by anyone with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. The i-model plug-ins for Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader will be downloadable from Bentley’s iWare website. Hardware acceleration with pixel shader support for manipulating the 3D PDFs in real-time is supported on FirePro graphics cards via DirectX.
The new AMD FirePro V7900 is based on the third generation of 40nm GPU (formerly codenamed Cayman) and features 1280 stream processors and 2GB GDDR5 memory. It is a single slot solution with four built-in DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and with the use of the included four active adapters, supports single link DVI displays out of the box. This allows it to drive 4 displays simultaneously (Eyefinity technology). It also includes a stereoscopic 3-pin mini-DIN (with included expansion bracket) and supports Framelock/Genlock using the ATI FirePro S400 synchronization module.
The card supports the new PowerTune power management technology for dynamic clock optimization, and adds GeometryBoost which provides 2X transform and backface culling and 3X tessellation performance in OpenGL and DX11. Drivers support OpenCL 1.1. CAD application-certified OpenGL 4.1, and DirectX 11. Additional professional graphics cards can be linked together using CrossFire Prot to enable CrossFire support for windowed applications, as well enabling up to 12 simultaneous Eyefinity displays (think video walls and digital signage on the cheap).
Full review on HotHardware: “if you’re looking for a low power, multiple monitor solution for your 3D animation and rendering workloads, definitely check out the new FirePro V7900 and V5900 cards from AMD.”.
Also see Icrontic
The new AMD FirePro V5900 mid-range professional graphics cards delivers 512 stream processors and 2GB GDDR5 memory. It has two DisplayPort 1.2 and one dual-link DVI outputs built in, and with the use of the included active adapter, multiple DVI-powered displays are also supported out of the box (in other words, mix and match your display types and sizes).
It supports the new PowerTune power management technology for dynamic clock optimization, and adds GeometryBoost which provides 2X transform and backface culling and 3X tessellation performance in both OpenGL and DX11. Drivers support OpenCL 1.1., OpenGL 4.1, and DirectX 11.
The card retails for $599 US.
Full review on HotHardware: “if you’re looking for a low power, multiple monitor solution for your 3D animation and rendering workloads, definitely check out the new FirePro V7900 and V5900 cards from AMD.”
Also see Icrontic
The new AMD FirePro V7800P is specially designed for use in rackmount servers, blade servers and PCIe expansion chassis. The passively cooled, half-length, full height card card requires 10 cubic feet / minute of airflow to keep it cool (servers normally deliver three times that rate in a peripheral slot). It can be plugged into a server proper or can be hosted in an external PCI-Express 2.0 chassis. It draws a maximum of 138 watts.
The card supports OpenCL 1.1 and DirectCompute 11 for massively parallel number crunching, as well as OpenGL 4.1 and DirectX 11 for high performance graphics processing. With all 1,440 cores working simultaneously, the FirePro V7800P can deliver 2 teraflops of single-precision and 400 gigaflops of double-precision floating point performance.
In addition to supporting traditional workstation graphics in a client/server model, AMD FirePro V7800P professional graphics also enable GPU compute, remote graphics and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments.
The new $149 AMD FirePro 2270 is a low-profile, fan-less, energy efficient (15 watts max, 10 watts average), dual-display graphics card targeting financial and corporate markets. It supports OpenGL 4.1 and DX11.
The new $469 ATI FirePro V5800 is a CAD/visualization solution w/ 1GB GDDR5 memory that can drive two high-resolution 30-bit 5MP medical displays using dual link DVI. It supports OpenGL 4.1, DX11 and OpenCL 1.1.
I’m not a gamer, but it is not at all difficult to translate this video review of the Radeon 6870 running using Eyefinity on 3 x 46” LCD TVs, to uses in 3D CAD and 3D visualization. The tech is cool, but the low price point and the low power consumption is what makes this a standout.
Reviews on the just-released second generation DX11 Radeon cards are out.
The gist: solid performance, lower cost, best-in-class energy efficiency, and an unmatched feature set, including full DirectX 11 support, Eyefinity multi-display technology, HD3D stereoscopic technology, Unified Video Decoder 3, great CrossFire GPU scaling, and DisplayPort 1.2 (enabling multiple displays at different resolutions, refresh rates, and color depth using Eyefinity). The cards also support both DirectCompute and OpenCL! KitGuru offers a comprehensive review of the Saphire Radeon HD6850 and HD6870 (summary here).
HotHardware says it most succinctly:
“One word aptly describes AMD’s latest Radeon HD 6800 series GPUs: refinement. AMD’s goal was to drive cost and power consumption out of their architecture, along with enhancing its capabilities, features and image quality in next-generation DX11 gaming engines. To that end we’d say the company has succeeded masterfully. With the Radeon HD 6870 at $239 MSRP, gamers can enjoy virtually all the performance and then some of AMD previous generation $299 card, but with lower power consumption and better support for DX11 features like tessellation and seemingly better multi-GPU scaling.
The Radeon line is for consumer cards and does not offer the accuracy or reliability or performance of the FirePro line. But the new GPU’s bode well for future FirePro professional graphic cards. More value with less energy consumption ( performance per Watt) is exactly the direction things should be heading in the professional DCC and CAD world.
And just because the video was so much fun, I am posting a promo video for the XFX Radeon 6800 implementations. I want that Eyefinity monitor setup!
AMD demonstrated the Llano APU at its Technical Forum in Taipei, Taiwan. It is a 32nm single die combining 4 Phenom II-type cores with powerful DX11 graphics.
The video of the Llano demo shows three compute-intensive workloads running simultaneously on Windows 7:
- multi-threaded calculation of the value of Pi to 32 million decimal places
- decoding 1080p HD video from a Blu-ray disc
- n-body DirectCompute particle effect using both GPU and CPU cores (Microsoft’s equivalent to OpenCL) , achieving around 30 GFLOPS (a relative measure of the available capacity to assist the CPU cores to accelerate a non-graphics application).
AMD aims to bring this level of raw compute power to mainstream PC users in 2011.
What do they think in a nutshell? The board has an edge over the competition because of Eyefinity, DX11 & DirectCompute support, open standards 3D, and OpenCL support.
From the article:
“AMD ... believes that its Eyefinity multi-monitor technology is going to cause even dedicated Nvidia-philes to take a look and is banking on its strategy of openness to give it a boost. ... their stereographic 3D technology will work with a variety of systems and 120/240 Hz monitors. In other words, they’re not promoting a proprietary solution like Nvidia does. Rather, they’ll work with vendors to create a system and so there may be different options for glasses and monitors.”
“AMD is also banking on DirectX 11 DirectCompute and OpenCL. DirectCompute is an open technology as long as you’re on Windows and OpenCL competes with Nvidia’s CUDA as an open technology to provide access to GPU processors.”
The recent Autodesk ‘See the Advantage’ Virtual Event conference was attended by about 1200 people. AMD’s FirePro team staffed a virtual booth, interacting with participants via chat. Participants could view demos, download information and ask questions of FirePro team members.
The materials and event venue are archived online until Jan 6, 2011 to anyone who registers (registration is free).
There is also a new page up on the AMD site worth checking out specifically for the Autodesk software user.
FireUser.com is a community resource for CAD, visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies and news with a focus on the AMD FirePro workstation graphics line.
