CUDA desktop rigs and whisper quiet workstations - report from SIGGRAPH

Wednesday I spent what time I had on the exhibition floor and saw a few things I liked.  First I went by the NVIDIA booth. The coolest thing they have at the booth is called a Quadro Plex 2200 D2 ($10.8k starting price).  What it is is an external system that is packed with 2-4 Quadro video cards.  When it’s plugged into your system you system recognizes it as one card.  It also automatically adjusts the resolution and scaling if you power more than one monitor.  The model I mentioned was the highest end and has 8GB memory, 120GBps memory bandwith, 1 Display Port, and 4 dual link DVI.  I thought this thing was amazing.

The other cool thing I saw worth mentioning was AMAX.  They make high end workstations and render farms.  The workstation I saw had five high power fans that were whisper quiet!  I literally had to put my ear up to the machine to hear it.  More on that later tonight when I get more time to post. Attending the ILM talk in the SV booth now.