Video interview from AutoDesk OTC talks about ATI FirePro certification for CAD

This video interview with AMD's Allen Bourgoyne, at the AutoDesk One Team Conference back in early March, talks about the new line of ATI FirePro workstation graphics accelerators and specifically mentions the certification process. I often see mention on several graphics sites about modding FirePro drivers to work on their near-spec-equivalent Radeon consumer version, so I thought this might be a good place to talk about what certification means - really.

Both the Radeon and FirePro cards and drivers are tested for AutoCAD and other DCC/CAD application. But only the FirePro gets certified.

Certified means:

• The card is tested extensively so that it operates as expected in the application using its driver - no unexpected clipping or unusual shading when viewing CAD objects. The driver makes specific assumptions about the board hardware, so even if a Radeon HD 5870 and a FirePro V8800 share 98% of the same hardware, the workstation driver and the certification is based on testing specifically for the professional hardware. So for example, the CAD- tuned performance with the FirePro V8800 assumes 2GB GDDR5 memory checking in at 1150MHz, support for the S400 Synchronization Module, clock differences, etc. With the Radeon card and drivers (modded or shipping), there is no guarantee of the performance - you simply have to accept that wire frames may peek out of shaded surfaces, and clipping can occur when multiple objects are animated. These artifacts simply don't occur when using the certified FirePro cards.
  
  
• You get support. Buy a FirePro card and you have a direct line to support from both the CAD vendor and from ATI. This counts mostly when you are in the middle of a time-sensitive project and suddenly your card is not performing as you expected.

In both cases I think the key point is that for professional CAD, Medical imaging and DCC, the cost of the software and the FirePro workstation graphics card is in-material compared to the cost of the people running the software/hardware. If the modeler or artist is waiting for screen re-draws or experiences unpredictable rendering behavior, or can't get support, that’s productivity lost.

Note: the video interview is obviously pretty scripted, but the specific mention of certification made it worth sharing. The other thing that I found interesting was the use of the word Fusion...