Siggraph

If you do anything that requires intensive GPU use, Nividia’s announcement this morning rocks. Claimed as the culmination of over a decade of continuous processing development, the Quadro Plex VCS (visual computing system) series of stand alone processing units deliver a compute density that runs up to a claimed 25x rendering power over SGI’s latest refrigerator-sized unit.

Compatible with standard x86 type 32- and 64-bit Intel and AMD microprocessor-based systems with a 16x PCI Express slot, the scalable, modular units can deliver up to 60 billion pixels/second fill rate. This enabled highly interactive demos of real world problems such as Google Earth’s familar map of the globe, but here it was projected at full HD res on 3 massive screens, and audience members were wowed to see that data from all the current flights in the air over the US could be visualized over a map of the country. You could even click on a dot representing a flight and get realtime info such as direction, flight number, air speed, and more.

This is a cool, radical move for graphics post. Get ready to be astonished at the new pace of graphics innovation sure to result.