Intro to Remote Graphics - video explaining the ATI FirePro RG220 card for PC-over-IP (PCoIP)

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?

Attend these SIGGRAPH events for a chance to win an ATI FirePro V5800, V7800 or V8800

If you are attending SIGGRAPH this year, be sure to check out the OpenGL BOF, Wednesday, 28 July | 5:15 pm - 7:15 pm.  This is your chance to learn what is new in OpenGL 4 and also to win an ATI FirePro V5800!

And if you are an analyst or can claim/forge press credentials, then be sure to check out the Jon Peddie Research’s Press Luncheon Wednesday July 28th, 2010 | 11:30am to see industry leaders discuss new “Fusion” technologies with CPU and GPU combined, cloud computing for CG, new workflows and developments in high performance graphics on the desktop.  You will also have an opportunity to win a FirePro V7800 or the top of the line FirePro V8800.

Be sure to also stop by the AMD booth #310 at SIGGRAPH to check out the full FirePro line.

ATI FirePro V7800, V5800 and V4800 now offered on Dell Precision workstations

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.

OpenCL 1.1 announced - to be supported by AMD Fusion APUs (combined GPU & CPU acceleration)

Khronos announced OpenCL 1.1.

OpenCL 1.1 adds significant functionality for enhanced parallel programming flexibility, functionality and performance on the GPU and CPU including:

• New data types including 3-component vectors and additional image formats;
• Handling commands from multiple hosts and processing buffers across multiple devices;
• Operations on regions of a buffer including read, write and copy of 1D, 2D or 3D rectangular regions;
• Enhanced use of events to drive and control command execution;
• Additional OpenCL C built-in functions such as integer clamp, shuffle and asynchronous strided copies;
• Improved OpenGL interoperability through efficient sharing of images and buffers by linking OpenCL and OpenGL events.

ATI Stream v2.1 SDK with OpenCL / OpenGL interoperability

AMD announced the ATI Stream v2.1 SDK (AMD's OpenCL computing implementation to accelerate application performance using both the CPU and GPU resources in a systems).

New features include:

• Support for OpenCL / OpenGL interoperability, to reduce the overhead of passing data for display purposes, enabling a richer and more responsive visual experience for the user.
• Support for OpenCL images, providing developers with access to hardware-accelerated texture features on AMD GPUs.
• OpenCL extension support for AMD media operations in OpenCL, giving developers a set of OpenCL kernel operations commonly used in multimedia applications.
• Support for OpenCL byte addressable stores allowing more natural and efficient code for applications, such as image processing, that depend on the ability to update data at smaller than 32-bit granularities.
• OpenCL extension support for device fission in OpenCL, enabling developers to sub-divide an OpenCL device and allowing multiple work kernels to be assigned to that device.
• Integration of Stream KernelAnalyzer 1.5 installer, which helps developers to statically analyze OpenCL kernel performance on AMD graphics processors.
• Support for next-generation ATI FirePro professional graphics card family, including the ATI FirePro V8800, and the latest ATI Radeon and ATI Mobility Radeon graphics cards from AMD (List of supported hardware).

The wait is over!  AMD updates entire FirePro line to Evergreen GPUs - DX11, Eyefinity, OpenGL, CAD

When AMD released the ATI FirePro V8800 it was clearly just a matter of time before we saw the entire FirePro lineup upgrade to the new DX11, OpenGL 3.2/4, Eyefinity Evergreen-based chips. Well the wait is over. Today AMD released 4 new FirePro models in addition to the V8800. (see the ATI FirePro family page and press release for more details)

Below are some summary specs for the new FirePro accelerators (red) with a comparison to the workstation graphics card they replace (gray).

* FH = Full Height, HH = Half Height, HL = Half Length, FL = Full Length
1. Measured under 3DMark 03.
2. Specific power, chassis space, connector and resource requirements may apply. Check with system manufacturer to see if dual cards are supported.

Obvious standouts to me: Faster memory, more memory (think VBO performance), huge increases in number of stream processors (a.k.a shader units), and Eyefinity support on all but the V3800. What I would like to also know is energy consumption in idle mode as well as some noise comparison to previous models. I know the V8800 was significantly better in both regards to its predecessor.

One last note: AMD actually released a 5th new card: the FirePro 2460 Multi-View - essentially a low-power, low-profile FirePro quad display solution designed for financial traders. So it is not for the CAD and DCC realm, but still pretty interesting because of the 13W average power consumption.

ATI FirePro V8800 brings ulta-high performance, DX11, OpenGL 3,4 & Eyefinty to workstation graphics

Ever since the Radeon 5XXX series I've been eagerly waiting for the FirePro professional cards that are based on the Cypress architecture. The , announced today does not disappoint. It clearly takes the crown as the most powerful workstation graphics card on the market. Here's the gist:

• 1600 stream processors for more than double the computational power of the V8750
• 2GB of ultra high speed GDDR5 memory
• Full 30-bit display pipeline (essential for medical imaging, pro video and photo editing)
• Four DisplayPort outputs driven by ATI Eyefinity technology giving the option of a multi-monitor desktop of over 10,000 pixels wide; driving a 4K projector; delivering combinations of portrait and landscape orientations; driving virtual prototyping and curved "surround view" video walls.
• Native CrossFire Pro multi-card support
• OpenCL support!
• Hardware tessellation
• Stereo3D support
• Windows and Linux drivers
• Certified for leading CAD and DCC apps (i.e. guaranteed reliability)

Check out the FirePro V8800 web page and data sheet for complete specs.

One last note: At $1499 ($300 less than the FirePro v8750!) I want to point out that this is a really competitive price for high-end workstation graphics.

I haven't yet seen any actual performance specs, but I really want to see how this performs for Autodesk products, CATIA, and MachStudio Pro, in particular with the recently released v8.702 or better drivers. If anyone has any test results, please drop a comment.

Update: 04/07/10 - Performance reviews are already coming in from HotHardware and most notably 3DProfessor. General consensus is: performance at a completely new level.
Also worth noting are two PDF case studies for the V8800 used in Broadcast 3D CG and CAD visualization

HP EliteBook 8740w workstation laptop sports DX11 / OpenGL / multi-display ATI FirePro M7820

Last week, HP announced their new 17-inch Core i5/i7 EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation. Although I missed the news, one of the more interesting notes is that this EliteBook ends the Nvidia workstation graphics exclusivity and now adds the ATI FirePro M7820 w/ 1GB GDDR5 memory to the line.

Configure the laptop with the ATI FirePro and in addition to better performance and half the power consumption than Nvidia’s flagship mobile workstation FX3800M, you get DirectX 11 and multi-display support. Using the FirePro the EliteBook can simultaneously support up to four independent display outputs, plus the native notebook panel, for a total of five displays.

The system will put a dent in your wallet (starting at $2k) but it is basically a full-fledged desktop workstation replacement for CAD users, graphic designers and videographers. The 1920 x 1080 30-bit DreamColor LED-backlit screen is a great option if you do anything requiring accurate color (from photo editing to medical imaging).

Update:  Just noticed that at the same time, HP also quietly added the new 1GB ATI FirePro M5800 workstation graphics card to their existing 15-in EliteBook 8540w - again bringing DX11 and power-sipping efficiency compared to Quadro options.

OpenGL 4.0 beta drivers released for consumer and FirePro line

AMD has posted a blog ”Ready, Willing and Able - AMD Supports OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0” announcing the new OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 beta drivers. The new beta driver fully enables the additional functionality introduced introduced in OpenGL 3.3 on all AMD ATI Radeon, ATI FirePro and ATI FireGL graphics accelerators - released since the spring of 2007. The Radeon HD 5400 Series to the Radeon HD 5900 Series, as well as the FirePro line are fully compatible with the OpenGL 4.0 standard, including tessellation and integration with the OpenCL API, enabling GPU acceleration in future OpenGL applications. 

OpenGL 3.3 & 4.0 breathe new life into existing graphics hardware and pave the way for next gen GPUs

Khronos and the OpenGL ARB have made an unprecedented move by releasing two new versions of OpenGL along with two new versions of the OpenGL Shading language all simultaneously. The specs are available here - OpenGL 3.3 , GLSL 3.3, OpenGL 4.0 and GLSL 4.0. This release announced at GDC breathes new life into existing graphics hardware and also paves the way for the next generations of GPUs.

Why two core specs and two language specs at once? OpenGL 4.0 and GLSL 4.0 enables access to new hardware such as the AMD HD5000 series cards which have been shipping for 5 months. OpenGL 3.3 and GLSL 3.3 provide new features that will be accessible on a much larger current installed base. You may have noticed that the GLSL revision went from 1.5 to 3.3 and 4.0. To make things easier on developers, the Shading Language versions now match the core OpenGL versions.

OpenGL 3.3

OpenGL 3.3 adds numerous updates to OpenGL functionality to make it more usable. Occlusion queries get a new boolean mode which tells you if any samples passed. Texture lookups can be swizzled before reaching shaders. Instanced arrays allow instanced rendering to reuse attribute data on multiple vertices based on a divisor. Also new is timer functionality that allows applications to find out how long geometry takes to render.

Applications that use many textures or switch texture state frequently will be able to take advantage of the new sampler objects in OpenGL 3.3. These new objects can encapsulate traditional texture state, allowing an application to use the same texture sample state on multiple texture images or multiple sample states on the same texture image. This makes texture setup much faster and easier for applications to track.

OpenGL 4.0

OpenGL 4.0 includes all of OpenGL 3.3 plus a slew of new stuff including enhanced blending, indexed drawing from buffer objects and enhanced transform feedback functionality. It also provides access to double precision floating point data types in shaders, key for compute, design, and digital content creation where precision is critical. New texture functionality allows for advanced texture gather fetches, new texture buffer formats and cube map array textures.

OpenGL 4.0 tessellation for worskation applications

One of the biggest additions to OpenGL 4.0 is tessellation. This new feature allows an application to amplify geometry, generating tessellated geometry based on incoming vertices. Tessellation can help applications take a rough object defined by only a few vertices and generate new vertices to smooth out the object and provide more detail. Check the Stumbling Ahead blog for more info. Using tessellation can be a huge win for many workstation applications which tend to be vertex and bandwidth limited.

GL Shading Language

The GL Shading Language has also been updated with the ability to dynamically assign subroutine usage at runtime. This means you can create a GLSL program that has many different subroutines and then pick which ones are used to alter lighting, material, or other effects as each piece of geometry is rendered. This makes program management much easier and introduces previously unattainable runtime flexibility.

OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0 continue to progress 3D API standards, increasing flexibility and usability for applications. Just as important, Khronos and the OpenGL ARB continue to work on bringing you the latest and greatest access to 3D hardware.