ACADEMIA

NVIDIA Corporation, 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).