Suddenly it seems there’s a graphics card horserace again: At the show, ATI jumped back into the race with Nvidia, announcing two strong contenders in its pro line of graphics cards (Radeon is the consumer/gamer card line), the ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700.

Also new: a re-branded name, from FireGL—the name kept from the purchase by ATI of the pro card line from a German graphics card manufacturer in 2001—to ATI FirePro.

For quite some time, ATI had made graphics cards that other manufacturers could take aim at as the best of the bunch. Most card makers dropped off though in the tough economics of that market, leaving Nvidia and ATI to challenge and leapfrog each other throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Things got a little shaky after AMD’s purchase of ATI in 2006, however, with AMD’s troubles threatening to pull ATI down. more

In scheduling a 9am press conference on the opening day of the Siggraph, Sony lost no time in providing an answer to the many who–over the years since technology was first announced—questioned the value of the Cell processor initiative.

The joint venture with IBM and Toshiba to develop a new type of media-savvy processor initially appeared in the PlayStation 3, but seemed adrift for any other applications, since the hardware design was significantly different from the legacy x86 the computer industry has grown comfortable with. (The Cell processor—referred to by the consortium as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor , or Cell/B.E., is a relatively unusual design that combines a general-purpose IBM POWERPC processor core that communicates with eight special-purpose, on-chip DSP cores.) more

Far from the Siggraph show floor, on the third floor of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, I saw the best 3D display demo I’ve encountered to date from a company out of Paris called Alioscopy. What particularly intrigued me about what they showed me was the fact that the technology has great crossover potential for all sorts of markets as the professional and consumer 3D revolutions march onward. In fact, and although I didn’t ask, this is probably one reason why Alioscopy is demonstrating its technology away from the show floor—the Siggraph market probably is far from the biggest potential market for Alioscopy’s technology. more

3D models and datasets have become too large for the standard desktop workstation to handle. To help combat the problem, NVIDIA Corporation, a worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, announced the D Series of NVIDIA Quadro Plex Visual Computing Systems (VCS) available in deskside or rackmount configurations. Engineered to provide the most robust NVIDIA Quadro GPU visualization performance to date, the Quadro Plex systems are ideal for the styling and design, geosciences and scientific visualization industries, working with extremely large 3D models, datasets and power walls. The new Quadro Plex series provides performance improvements of up to 100% over previous versions and offers massively parallel processing capabilities using multiple Quadro graphics cards for visualization, large-scale projection and display, or computation with the NVIDIA CUDA Parallel Computing Processor. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

At SIGGRAPH 2008, HP expanded its DreamColor technology portfolio with the introduction of a powerful mobile workstation – the HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation with DreamColor Display – that offers professionals exceptional color accuracy.

In addition, HP introduced the HP EliteBook 8530w Mobile Workstation, the HP EliteBook 8530p Notebook PC, a customer calibration kit for the now-shipping DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display, and two additional high-performance displays to meet the demands of a new generation of visual computing customers. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

Founded in Austin in 1998, BOXX Technologies is using this Siggraph to celebrate its 10th anniversary with a number of prize contests, giveaways, and special edition hot-rodded workstations, to name just some of the reasons why the booth seems to have a sense of excitement.

The company holds a special place in the hearts and minds of those creatives who spend their days in the trenches creating the effects seen in many top feature films and television commercials, says Francois Wolf, director of marketing at BOXX. “A lot of companies have fallen off the cliff,” says Wolf. “We haven’t, because we don’t try to offer everything, but choose to do a few things very well.” more

Cinnafilm, a pioneering developer of advanced film and video production tools, announced the immediate availability of Cinnafilm HD1, the industry’s first all-in-one format conversion platform designed specifically for film simulation and unlimited frame rate conversion of digital video. The unique combined hardware and software platform leverages the power of graphics card parallel processing to deliver unmatched quality format conversions and celluloid simulations quickly, easily, cost effectively and most significantly, in real-time. HD1 places complete and instantaneous control of the artistic process directly into the hands of creative professionals without sacrificing production quality or visual integrity. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

HP will unveil unmatched, powerful computing solutions for creative professionals at SIGGRAPH 2008, and provide multiple opportunities to see them at the show.

Demonstrations and talks from HP include:

• HP DreamColor Display technology

o Demonstrations of the technology offered at the bottom of every hour.

o Customers share their experiences at the top of every hour.

o Demos and customer talks held in HP booth #739. Read on at The Briefing Room

More Siggraph 2008 news from The Briefing Room

AMD has struggled over the past year with production and marketing snafus, and some worried that the well-regarded ATI FireGL series cards would be in trouble. After all, AMD, which spent $5.4 billion to buy graphics card maker ATI last year, had long-time ATI CEO Dave Orton leave the combined company this past month. (While some speculated that there were problems over the buyout, Orton has only said that he was tired of the long-distance commute from his Ontario home.)

No need to worry, it seems. At the show, AMD announced five new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators, ranging from the $299 ATI FireGL V3600 to the first card to support 2GB of RAM, the top-of-the-line $2799 ATI FireGL V8650. more

IBM originally envisioned the new HC-10 Workstation Blade as a workstation replacement, say IBM’s Dave Laux and George Dolbier. It‘s a high density server with embedded GPU acceleration. “We found it also worked incredibly well as a headless render node,” Laux says a little wryly. Isn’t interesting when hardware reveals its own mission?

First let’s just say that a workstation blade is an interesting idea for those who can afford the infrastructure. It means that every seat in the house can share a common pool of workstations easily (in theory). more