NVIDIA Quadro Platforms Enable a New Era of Scalable Supercomputing

 

 

NVIDIA® Professional “Off-the-Shelf” Solutions Signal a New Era of Computing for Technical Applications such as VizSim, Medical Imaging, Science, Film and Video, Automotive, and Aerospace

For further information, contact:

David Higham
NVIDIA Corporation
(408) 486-8287
dhigham@nvidia.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SIGGRAPH 2005—LOS ANGELES—AUGUST 1, 2005—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today introduced a new range of scalable visual computing platforms. These new platforms signal a fundamental shift in the market from legacy solutions that are prohibitively expensive to install and maintain, to standardized platforms that scale efficiently over time.

These standardized platforms feature a wide range of NVIDIA industry solutions that include:

• NVIDIA Quadro® commercial off the shelf (COTS) graphics solutions
• NVIDIA nForce™ Professional media and communications processors (MCPs)
• NVIDIA® ForceWare™ unified driver architecture (UDA)
• NVIDIA® Gelato™ rendering software
• NVIDIA® Scene Graph software

At SIGGRAPH 2005, NVIDIA will showcase examples of platforms that will reshape industries:

• Scientific Visualization - An immersive visualization dome showing interactive real time and rendered content, created and displayed at the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and found in many of the world’s leading planetariums – all displayed using a single AMD Opteron-based HP xw9300 workstation. Designed and engineered by Elumenati using projection technology from Elumens and Christie, the dome offers SIGGRAPH attendees an array of high-definition visual experiences, ranging from the smallest molecules to the largest galaxies in the universe.
• Film and Broadcast - A digital production pipeline enabling the creation, finishing, and delivery of cutting edge content leveraging the same digital assets throughout the entire high precision, FP16 OpenEXR formatted pipeline with NVIDIA Gelato and Sorbetto™ rendering and relighting technology, and the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000 SDI integrated graphics-to-video solution delivering high definition 10-bit uncompressed SDI content.
• Automotive Styling and Design - A six system visualization cluster that uses the NVIDIA Quadro G-Sync option board to framelock six high resolution projection displays and run an interactive automotive styling application from Realtime Technology.

“Realtime Technology designs real-time visualization technologies, services and solutions for automotive and aircraft clients, such as Porsche, Airbus, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler,” said Ludwig A. Fuchs, co-founder and CTO of Realtime Technology. “NVIDIA platforms allow these customers to deploy standardized prototyping and demonstration systems that can be widely deployed across an organization. These systems are far more cost-effective and scalable than the legacy proprietary systems they are quickly replacing.”

These NVIDIA nForce Professional-based solutions employ the latest NVIDIA Quadro graphics to deliver a level of compute power never before found in “off the shelf” workstations. These platforms incorporate NVIDIA hardware and software technology designed to meet the needs of customers in markets where performance and image quality requirements are paramount.

“NVIDIA is addressing the needs of the most demanding users, all of whom expect optimal customized, yet readily available solutions, engineered for high-performance and reliability,” stated Gautam Shah, president of Colfax International. “As technology evolves, so must the solutions, and we are seeing our customers move towards COTS-based systems to replace their legacy systems, at a fraction of the cost.”

These NVIDIA platforms are now available widely through leading OEMs and NVIDIA channel partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadtek (APAC), and Elsa (Japan). For more information on this and the full lineup of NVIDIA professional solutions, please visit www.nvidia.com/quadro.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors.  The Company’s products enhance the end-user experience on consumer and professional computing devices. NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), media and communications processors (MCPs), and wireless media processors (WMPs) have broad market reach and are incorporated into a variety of platforms, including consumer and enterprise PCs, notebooks, workstations, PDAs, mobile phones, and video game consoles. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and employs more than 2,100 people worldwide.  For more information, visit the Company’s Web site at www.nvidia.com.

About the America Museum of Natural History
Since its founding in 1869, the American Museum of Natural History has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures and the natural world through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions.  The institution houses a permanent collection of more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts.  In addition, the Museum’s Web site, www.amnh.org, extends its collections and programs to millions more beyond the Museum’s walls.

About Elumenati
Elumenati, through a partnership with Elumens Corporation, specializes in developing new markets for fisheye projection through products and highly specialized services. These markets include art and entertainment venues as well as small planetarium and education applications. Expertise in content development and optical system design allow them to find innovative and often less costly solutions in creating immersive environments. Please visit www.elumenati.com.

About Elumens Corporation
Elumens is a leading provider of immersive display solutions to the Simulation & Training Industry. Elumens' Vision Series products have also been broadly adopted for visualization applications within the Architecture, Engineering, Scientific Research, Education, Planetarium, and Entertainment markets. The company’s award winning hemispherical display systems incorporate patented TruTheta technology to deliver wide field-of-view, distortion-free imagery and a compelling visual experience. Please visit www.elumens.com.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to costs reductions resulting from use of NVIDIA scalable platforms, the benefits, features, capabilities and performance of NVIDIA scalable platforms, solutions featured on the scalable platforms, and availability of scalable platforms are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations.  Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, delays in ramping new products into production, manufacturing and software defects, unpredictable costs associated with use of the scalable platforms, proper use of the scalable platforms, the development of more effective and efficient scalable platforms, incompatibility of technologies, general industry trends, acceptance and use of new technologies and products by our current and future partners, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, changes in industry standards and interfaces, our dependence on third-party manufacturers, developers and publishers and other risks detailed from time to time in the NVIDIA reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended May 1, 2005. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.