Creo Parametric 2.0 enhanced Transparency & Frame Rates using OIT and VBO on AMD FirePro

This video runs through a comprehensive set of tests that demonstrates the ultra-fast GPU-accelerated (900%) 3D transparency rendering mode in PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 and a 4X increase in shaded 3D frame rates and interactivity using Vertex Buffer Objects (VBO) on AMD FirePro professional graphics cards.

The video shows the percent performance enhancement in FPS for PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 compared to PTC Pro/Engineer Wildfire.  Summary results as follows:

• Wireframe mode - +21%
• Wireframe HLR - +667%
• Shaded - +427%
• Shaded + Edges - +544%
• Shaded High Quality - +497%
• Real-Time Rendering - +6,216%
• Transparency (blended vs OIT) - +801%

Article: How does Order Independent Transparency Accelerate Creo 2.0

Order independent transparency or “OIT” in computer graphics programming terminology denotes any technique that can correctly render overlapping semi-transparent objects without having to sort them before they are being rendered. Rendering semi-transparent objects has always been a problem because the blending operation is order dependent: when a semi-transparent fragment is rendered, the underlying color (i.e. the background) is crucial for the final color to be correct. 

This article and accompanying white paper, explain how AMD implemented the OIT technique in PTC Creo Parametric 2.0. The technique uses standard ARB OpenGL 4.2 extensions like Atomic Counter and Shader Image load/store which enables access to texture buffer directly from the shader. The implementation allows for pixel accurate rendering of overlapping semi-transparent objects without having to sort them before they are being rendered, providing up to 9 or 10 times performance improvement when rendering transparency in Creo Parametric 2.0 versus blended rendering in PRO/Engineer Wildfire5.0.

Tom’s Hardware reviews FirePro V3900 - better value than Quadro 400, 600

Tom’s Hardware has a particularly interesting review of AMD’s new entry level ($110) discrete, professional GPU - the AMD FirePro V3900. Tom’s ran a suite of benchmarks and the FirePro V3900 completely dominated Nvidia’s Quadro 400 and beat out the Quadro 600 in most scenario, often by a great margin - particularly in CATIA, Lightwave, Maya, and SolidWorks, and Siemens NX

Notably, the V3900 draws more power in idle and under load than its competitors, but Tom’s still recommend the FirePro V3900.

“The FirePro V3900 is a fitting successor for the V3800. Priced at $110, we consider it to be a good value in the entry-level workstation graphics card space. As long as you’re primarily looking at mostly static CAD images, this card is a good alternative to the low-end Quadro cards, both with respect to price and performance.”

Tom’s also did a quick comparison to comparable chips on consumer cards like the Radeon HD 6570 or Geforce GT 430 and saw massive performance dips due to consumer grade drivers. Conclusion: “For folks whose jobs depend on good performance and validation in money-making applications, paying the extra money (for the professional card and driver) is probably justified.”

White Paper | Simplifying the World of Professional Graphics

This white paper from AMD and featured on DesignWorld, is a great introduction for anyone who is in CAD / CAE, DCC, Scientific Visualization, or Medical Imaging but doesn’t really completely understand all of the buzzwords or specs-and-feed language typically espoused by the 3D graphic card vendors. It’s basically a from top to bottom explanation of how 3D graphics work, what makes up a graphics card, what OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX do, and how to combine GPUs to do even more. It then goes on to give real examples of how various industries benefit from GPU acceleration. Finally it described some of the FirePro advantages (notably ability to handle huge datasets, Eyefinity, reliability, and support).

OpenGL + OpenCL waterfall demo running on a FirePro card in HPC Tyan blade server

This waterfall demo video from SC11 is running on the recently announced Tyan blade server with a FirePro V8800 graphics card. It shows OpenGL 3D rendering and OpenCL compute simultaneous driving a 3D simulation of particles flow and a 2D simulation of the water surface.

The other pics below are also from SC11:  The specs for the Tyan 2U server; two closeup shots of the 2U blade server with FirePro graphics; and MotionDSP’s Ikena OpenCL-accelerated imaging software.

OpenGL 4.2 improves shader performance, texture handling, & speeds repositioning of complex objects

New functionality in the today announced OpenGL 4.2 specification includes enabling shaders with atomic counters for things like object for single-rendering-pass order-independent transparency, capturing GPU-tessellated geometry to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated, modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements, and enhanced transfer of data between shader stages.

Christophe Riccio has published a review of the new features in OpenGL 4.2 on Google Docs

Any FirePro graphics card will be able to run applications that use 4.2.

• AMD OpenGL 4.2 Beta Catalyst Preview Driver for Windows
• AMD OpenGL 4.2 Beta Catalyst Preview Driver for Linux

AMD FirePro V7900 3rd generation high-end professional graphics card

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

AMD FirePro V5900 w/ 2GB RAM, DisplayPort 1.2,  Eyefinity, OpenGL, OpenCL, DX11, PowerTune-$599

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

AMD FirePro V7800P : performance graphics + massive compute power for servers

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.