This white paper from AMD and featured on DesignWorld, is a great introduction for anyone who is in CAD / CAE, DCC, Scientific Visualization, or Medical Imaging but doesn’t really completely understand all of the buzzwords or specs-and-feed language typically espoused by the 3D graphic card vendors. It’s basically a from top to bottom explanation of how 3D graphics work, what makes up a graphics card, what OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX do, and how to combine GPUs to do even more. It then goes on to give real examples of how various industries benefit from GPU acceleration. Finally it described some of the FirePro advantages (notably ability to handle huge datasets, Eyefinity, reliability, and support).
The winner of the Cubicle Toy Design Contest sponsored by AMD FirePro Graphics, Dell and Desktop Engineering is Mark Norwood. He will receive a Dell Precision Workstation with professional AMD FirePro graphics.
Of the three finalists, Jason Cox managed to convey his remote-controlled mouse in solid form, along with exploded views showing how internal subcomponents would fit together. Ray Kelly’s detailed bottle cap blaster SolidWorks assembly gave you a clear idea how the internal mechanism would work. Mark Norwood’s water-spraying Sherman tank renderings and transparent views show how he planned to fit the water-carrying tube inside the tank’s shell.
In the end, the sheer amount of CAD and visualization efforts that went into the project, along with a fully assembled physical prototype, tipped the scale in Mark Norwood’s favor.
The finalist for the Cubicle Toy Design Contest sponsored by AMD FirePro Graphics, Dell and Desktop Enginneering were announced. The contest was for creative engineers to create a cubicle toy that would be guaranteed to inspire, amuse, amaze, or annoy your coworkers. The winner receives a Dell Precision Workstation with professional AMD FirePro graphics.
The designs are in, the judges have deliberated and the finalists for DE’s Design Challenge are ...
Mark Norwood for his water-spraying Sherman tank.
Jason Cox for his remote-controlled PC mouse.
Ray Kelley for his bottlecap blaster.
Next week, Jason, Mark, and Ray’s final designs will be posted to DE Facebook fan page so readers and fans can help select the winner by voting on their favorites.
SolidWorks World 2012 is coming up Feb 12-15, 2012 in San Diego. The AMD FirePro team will again have a strong presence reflecting the long-standing collaboration and optimization with SolidWorks/Dassualt Systemes.
On display in Booth #207, AMD FirePro engineers will present demos of FirePro graphic cards for entry to high-end users, mobile workstations, Eyefinity and 3DVIA Composer.
In Break Out Session #4080 on Tuesday, February 14, 10:30 AM, Oliver Zegdoun will present: “Tuning Your Workstation to Get the Best Out of SolidWorks”
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp (SPEC) is seeking help to develop a new workstation performance benchmark.
The Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (SPEC/GWPG) is seeking applications, algorithms and workloads that measures the performance of workstations running CAE (Computer Aided Engineering), digital media and entertainment, finance, health sciences and energy. The tests should be scalable (i.e. support multi-core processors), preferably solve large problems, support multiple architectures and be freely available to the public.
AMD FirePro team sponsored the 2011 EDEM Visualization Contest. The entries represented a wide range of applications of EDEM being used in engineering design, industrial R&D and academic research, addressing a wide spectrum of bulk materials handling and processing challenges across industry. The winner’s gallery features the top 5 videos and top 5 still images.
At last year’s SC10 EDEM demonstrated a 25-fold acceleration (compared to CPU alone) as the result of porting their EDEM MCAD/MCAE particle simulation application to OpenCL running on AMD FirePro graphics cards. They displayed the accelerated visualizations across six 24” displays using Eyefinity.
1st prize video:
EDEM simulation shows mixing of asphalt aggregate in the outer chamber of the Astec Double Barrel drum mixer
1st prize still image:
EDEM simulation of a conventional VR Steel dragline bucket design (with a full set of rigging). The visualization gives valuable insight into hoist & drag forces, optimal carry angle, and optimal design for soil flow.
The Dassault Systemes Customer Conference (DSCC 2011) brings together customers, partners and technology leaders representing 11 industries and users of the DS 3D and PLM brands: CATIA for designing the virtual product, DELMIA for virtual production, SIMULIA for virtual testing, ENOVIA global collaborative innovation, EXALEAD for search-based applications, 3DSwYm for social collaboration and 3DVIA for online 3D lifelike experiences.
The AMD FirePro team demoed a common manufacturing workflow using AMD Eyefinity technology across 3 displays using a single FirePro graphic card to create assembly and maintenance instructions of a radio controlled car. The multi-application workflow moves from design using CATIA V5 or V6 to 3DVIA Composer for technical illustration, exploded views and bill of materials lists. From there you can output in 3D XML or 3D pdf format for use in the field or on the shop floor as a technical manual .
The first video shows this multi-application workflow running on a Dell T3500 workstation with a a FirePro V7900 card.
The second video shows CATIA running across 3-display using Eyefinity on the FirePro M8900 Mobility Pro 2GB graphics card that is standard on the Dell Precision M6600 mobile workstation.
And some photos if you don’t have time for the videos.
At Bentley’s annual “Be Inspired” conference in Amsterdam, Greg Bentley told the audience that the ability to package Point Cloud data in 3D PDFs will be coming soon thanks to Bentley’s newly acquired point cloud capabilities.
i-Models have been available within Bentley applications as an exchange tool (an i-Model is a container for data exchange and enables bidirectional feedback). But now CAD users will be create iModels and exchange them as 3D PDFs for use by anyone with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. The i-model plug-ins for Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader will be downloadable from Bentley’s iWare website. Hardware acceleration with pixel shader support for manipulating the 3D PDFs in real-time is supported on FirePro graphics cards via DirectX.
Everything else aside, the new FirePro V4900 achieves an immediate 20% compute and texture advantage over the V4800 at the same clocks. The V4900 comes with 1GB of 128-bit GDDR5 RAM and supports DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.2, and OpenCL. It also supports Eyefinity with 1 DVI port and 2 full size DisplayPorts which means the V4900 can be used to drive up to 6 displays when paired with MST hubs. Like all FirePro cards, the drivers are certified for specific professional applications and the board comes with a 3 yr 24/7 warranty. At $189 the V4900 doesn’t have any direct competition - it’s more than $200 cheaper than the Quadro 2000 and competitive with the Quadro 600.
This Webinar (Thursday, November 17, 2011 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST) from DesignWorld will examine the details of CPUs and GPUs, explore their differences and similarities, and highlight the computing power they can provide. It will also look specifically at OpenCL, what it is, what it does, and how this new computing interface will change the way software developers create software and help end users fully realize the compute power contained within today’s modern desktop computers.
FireUser.com is a community resource for visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies, discuss support issues, as well as influence the features and direction of the FireGL and FirePro accelerator line.
