upFront eZine talks to AMD at SolidWorks World 2010 - How do you distinguish yourselves from nVidia?

upFront ezine is an independent newsletter and great resource for anyone in the CAD industry.  The latest issue is filled with news and interviews from SolidWorks World 2010 including an interview with AMD’s World Wide Senior Product Marketing Manager for Workstation Graphics, Bahman Dara. I’m going to repeat several of the Q&As here, but check out the newsletter for the full scoop.

“How do you distinguish yourselves from nVidia,” was my first question.

For one, AMD focuses on workstation and DCC graphics only. (DCC is digital content creation, those guys who create graphics for games and TV commercials.) For another, their graphics boards cost less than those from nVidia, when measured by performance per dollar. (nVidia skipped this show; in their place was retail proxy PNY.) AMD has just two product names: Radeon for consumers and FirePro for professionals. FirePro is divided into:
- FirePro V-series for CAD and DCC.
- FirePro Multi-View for multimonitor “text” users like financial traders.
And then both are available in desktop and notebook ("mobile") versions.

“And what about the future?” I wondered.

Mr Dara told me that AMD is working on remote graphics, using compression to deliver graphics from a central server through a cable to desktops via Ethernet or USB.

See the issue to learn more about the SolidWorks World keynotes, future plans for SolidWorks, as well more on AMD plans.