In a previous post I described the basics of the AMD SurRoundHouse at CES 2013. The SurRoundHouse is a next-generation home theater demo, set up in a mock old style cabin with 10 windows that are actually 1080p-capable displays. Powered by AMD FirePro W8000s, a FirePro W9000 and a FirePro S400 genlock/framelock board, the panoramic HD content (totally 10,800x1920 or 20 megapixels) is perfectly synced with 360 degree spatial audio.
The video by Chris Pirillo, gives a feel for the demo. The intro to this demo, presented by Bill Herz, Chief Multimedia Technologist at AMD explains the setup and then goes into a 2.5 min multi-screen demo with cows, helicopters flying (and crashing), a train, a hostage situation, etc - all run from a single, multi-FirePro GPU system.
Herz presents two versions of the demo: the first uses standard audio; the second uses AMD’s Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio which renders 3D positional audio (in this case via 32 speakers). The positional audio clearly brings Eyefinity technology to a whole different level.
This evening at CES 2013, AMD will preview the SurRound House powered by AMD FirePro W8000s, a W9000 and a FirePro S400 genlock/framelock board. The SurRoundHouse is a next-generation home theater demo that delivers panoramic HD content perfectly paired with spatial audio - immersing participants in a true surround, 360 degree sensory experience.
From the Forbes article on the demo:
The demo is actually a house, which will be situated outside the Las Vegas Convention Center. Viewers will enter into what looks like a “farm cabin” with 10 windows, each of which is actually a 55” LED TV. These TVs are tied together by AMD Eyefinity display technology, which allows them to be run from a single PC with the AMD FirePro graphics cards.
Also at work will be AMD’s Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio, which can render 3D positional audio, in this case via 32 speakers, including four subwoofers. It is the audio that leads the viewer to integrate the separate images in the windows into a single coherent experience. The audio fills the gaps between the separate displays and allows the viewer to figure out what is happening as a complex story line unfolds.
The Reality Deck (aka HoloDeck) is a 416 screen super-high resolution virtual reality four-walled surround-view theater, driven by 70 AMD Firepro V9800 cards (4 per node each driving six monitors) in an 18-node computing cluster. Each of the nodes and cards within the nodes is synced with an AMD FirePro S400 card. Exxact helped build the nodes for Stony Brook using their Spectrum FXR410-192R configuration.
This “Holodeck” is the largest resolution immersive display ever built driven for a graphic supercomputer. While it will not be quite the simulated reality environment found on the starship Enterprise, it will fully immerse visitors in 1.5 billion pixels of information, approaching the visual acuity of the human eye.
The Stony Brook University facility is designed to help scientists, engineers and physicians visualize the massive amounts of information in the era of Big Data, including CT scans, satellite imaging, climate modeling, astronomical applications, pharmaceuticals, weather predictions, etc. See original NSF Grant press release for more background.
The Green500 List ranks of the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers. This year, the AMD FirePro S10000 has taken the SANAM supercomputer to #2.
AMD worked with the University of Frankfurt’s Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) to research quantum chromodynamics. Powered by 420 AMD FirePro S10000 dual-GPU server graphics cards, the SANAM supercomputer can sustain 420 TFLOPS, providing a system energy efficiency of over 2.3 GFLOPS per watt and performing 2,351 million calculations per second per watt.
Overall, the performance of machines in the Green500 List has increased at a higher rate compared to power consumption. “That’s why the machines’ efficiencies are going up,” says Feng. “We are more performance for the same amount of power.” For machines based on commodity components—machines built with off-the-shelf components—coprocessors and GPUs are attributing a great deal to the efficiency gains. So much so that they are keeping pace and in the latest list even outpacing purpose built systems like IBM’s Blue Gene/Q.
Consuming a total of 3.6 kilowatts, the folks down in the basement lab at AMD have built the fastest multi-GPU compute server using eight of their flagship compute powerhouse boards, the new AMD FirePro S10000!
This 16 GPU (eight S10000s) Exxact Computing Server provides more than 8 TFLOPS of real world double precision computing performance. While these are early drivers, this still means you are still seeing around 70% efficiency of the theoretical peak double precision floating point performance of 11.84 TFLOPS (47.28 TFLOPS peak single precision performance!).
Here’s a look at the DGEMM result and a glimpse at what’s under the hood of the compute server:
Compute Performance: Most powerful dual-GPU server graphics card ever created, delivering up to 1.3 times the single precision and up to 7.8 times peak double-precision floating-point performance of the competition's comparable dual-GPU product. It also boasts an unprecedented 1.48 TFLOPS of peak double-precision floating-point performance
Increased Performance-Per-Watt: The AMD FirePro S10000 delivers the highest peak double-precision performance-per-watt - 3.94 gigaFLOPS - up to 4.7 times more than the competition's comparable dual-GPU product
High Memory Bandwidth: Equipped with a 6GB GDDR5 frame buffer and a 384-bit interface, the AMD FirePro S10000 delivers up to 1.5 times the memory bandwidth of the comparable competing dual-GPU solution
DirectGMA Support: This feature removes CPU bandwidth and latency bottlenecks, optimizing communication between both GPUs. This also enables P2P data transfers between devices on the bus and the GPU, completely bypassing any need to traverse the host's main memory, utilize the CPU, or incur additional redundant transfers over PCI Express resulting in high throughput low-latency transfers which allow for quick compute of complex calculations requiring high accuracy
OpenCL Support: OpenCL has become the compute programming language of choice among developers looking to take full advantage of the combined parallel processing capabilities of the FirePro S10000. This has accelerated computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), and media and entertainment (M&E) software, changing the way professionals work thanks to performance and functionality improvement.
See the AMD FirePro S10000 at booth #2019 at SC12. Product spec sheet here.
More detailed comparative info later this morning...
As a follow on to the 2012 Maker Faire,13 yr old Riley Lewis was asked to participate in the 13th annual Take Flight for Kids event in San Jose, CA. “Take Flight” is a Science & Engineering outreach aimed at students on the East Side of San Jose where the opportunities to get close to planes, and hands on science are limited.
The AMD FirePro team sponsored the 3D Design Lab at the event, supplying two Cube 3D printers, a number of sample items, an HP workstation running SolidWorks and an AMD FirePro graphics card to make the CAD program fly.
About 1000 students visited the AMD FirePro 3D Design Lab. SolidWorks running on the HP workstation with a FirePro graphics card showed students what a part looked like in a CAD program and what the same part looked like when it was printed out. You could watch the “lights come on” as students looked at the interactive CAD illustration and then handled the physical 3D-printed part. For many, this was the quintessential “ah ha” moment.
Seeing the same object that was on the computer display, emerge on the print bed layer-by-layer as the printer literally hums along, was engrossing. As a quick take-away “gift” Riley designed a fast-to-print dog-tag for booth visitors.
From Riley’s dad: “The support from folks like AMD has already made a huge difference in the lives of 30+ students at Riley’s public school. Kids who might never have thought about 3D Design, High End Graphics or Engineering have received some great exposure and hands on experience that no other school in the state can provide.”
It’s not exactly a professional graphics story, but it is pretty cool.
The AMD AppZone Player, announced today enables hundreds of thousands of Android apps to be used on AMD PCs and APUs using the CPU and GPU (via OpenGL). The AppZone also offers remote smartphone control. AMD has collaborated with BlueStacks, whose innovative “award-winning LayerCake technology” bridges Android and x86 application ecosystems.
There is a clever new product from Luxion call KeyshotVR that lets you create high-quality, touch-enabled, 3D rendered content that can be displayed and manipulated in any web browser supporting HTML5. KeyShotVR is not WebGL-based, so it can work on a wide range of browsers and devices. My understanding is that it generates a file composed of a bunch of individual rendered images that can then be played back in any HTML5 capable browser using JavaScript and progressive image loading. Pretty clever interim solution while the world catches up to OpenCL and WebGL.
Try manipulating the image below using the mouse or finger gestures to zoom in/out or rotate.
North American Eagle was at the COE 2012 Annual PLM Conference and TechniFair last week and met up with Antoine Reymond from the AMD FirePro team. NAE used AMD FirePro Graphic Cards in each of their Lenovo ThinkStations to drive their designs.
Who is North American Eagle? Their goal is to break the current world land speed record of 763 MPH (341.09 m/s), set on October 15, 1997. The American-Canadian team is converting a former USAF Lockheed F-104 jet fighter into one of the most sophisticated vehicles on earth.
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