Monday, July 25th 2016
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AMD Announces the Radeon Pro SSG
AMD today announced it is developing a new Radeon Pro solution for large dataset applications, which will be available initially as a developer kit. Starting at a full terabyte of Radeon Solid State Graphics (SSG), this innovative Radeon Pro technology will provide more than an order of magnitude greater memory capacity compared to existing GPU memory implementations, enabling vastly higher performance. The new solution is ideal for the next wave of demanding use-case scenarios including real-time post-production of 8K video, high-resolution rendering, VR content creation, oil and gas exploration, computational engineering, medical imaging and life sciences.
During the world's first demonstration of a Radeon Pro SSG solution, 8K raw video timeline scrubbing was accelerated from 17 frames per second to a stunning 90+ frames per second. As content creators rapidly adopt 8K resolution to future-proof their content, a 5X performance boost will improve quality of life, productivity and efficiency in the editing process.State of the art content creation, scientific and engineering visualization applications require the processing of big datasets, far larger than can be contained within the capacities of existing GPU memory. Current limitations require slices of data to be processed individually and later merged by software, and often incur significant latency for fetching additional data from system memory. These big data problems discourage developers in these domains from leveraging the advantages of the GPU. Radeon Pro SSG memory addresses the big data problem for GPUs, paving the way for improved performance and dramatically increased user productivity.
"One of the most challenging constraints faced by GPU computing applications is the inability to access terabytes of data," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "Radeon Pro SSG is poised to not only speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, but also to enable new application experiences by utilizing data persistence of non-volatile memory. This will be a disruptive advancement for many graphics and compute applications."
"AMD has a long history of memory technology innovations, and Radeon Pro SSG is the latest example," said Patrick Moorhead, Founder and Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy. "Larger local memory on the graphics card can speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, and should also allow for results with finer granularity and resolution. This will be a notable advancement for many graphics and compute applications."
Memory architecture
When needed information is not available in GPU memory, typical memory architecture requires the GPU to send a request to the CPU. The CPU then retrieves the needed content from CPU memory, or if not there then from a hard drive. This entails considerable overhead that limits GPU performance. With this new GPU technology, a one terabyte extended frame buffer is dedicated to support the GPU. This enables much larger datasets to be loaded locally, connected over a dedicated PCIe bus. When the GPU requests content, it looks first in the local frame buffer and only needs to involve the CPU if the data is not already in the extended frame buffer.
Lineup
Applications for developer kits are now being accepted. These are available for $9,999. Full availability is planned for 2017.
During the world's first demonstration of a Radeon Pro SSG solution, 8K raw video timeline scrubbing was accelerated from 17 frames per second to a stunning 90+ frames per second. As content creators rapidly adopt 8K resolution to future-proof their content, a 5X performance boost will improve quality of life, productivity and efficiency in the editing process.State of the art content creation, scientific and engineering visualization applications require the processing of big datasets, far larger than can be contained within the capacities of existing GPU memory. Current limitations require slices of data to be processed individually and later merged by software, and often incur significant latency for fetching additional data from system memory. These big data problems discourage developers in these domains from leveraging the advantages of the GPU. Radeon Pro SSG memory addresses the big data problem for GPUs, paving the way for improved performance and dramatically increased user productivity.
"One of the most challenging constraints faced by GPU computing applications is the inability to access terabytes of data," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "Radeon Pro SSG is poised to not only speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, but also to enable new application experiences by utilizing data persistence of non-volatile memory. This will be a disruptive advancement for many graphics and compute applications."
"AMD has a long history of memory technology innovations, and Radeon Pro SSG is the latest example," said Patrick Moorhead, Founder and Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy. "Larger local memory on the graphics card can speed-up processing for many applications with very large datasets, and should also allow for results with finer granularity and resolution. This will be a notable advancement for many graphics and compute applications."
Memory architecture
When needed information is not available in GPU memory, typical memory architecture requires the GPU to send a request to the CPU. The CPU then retrieves the needed content from CPU memory, or if not there then from a hard drive. This entails considerable overhead that limits GPU performance. With this new GPU technology, a one terabyte extended frame buffer is dedicated to support the GPU. This enables much larger datasets to be loaded locally, connected over a dedicated PCIe bus. When the GPU requests content, it looks first in the local frame buffer and only needs to involve the CPU if the data is not already in the extended frame buffer.
Lineup
- Radeon Pro WX 4100 is designed for small form factor (SFF) workstations and provides amazing performance in a half-height card.
- Radeon Pro WX 5100 is ideal for real-time content engines and immersive real-time design and manufacturing, including CAD and CAM.
- Radeon Pro WX 7100 is fully capable for design engineering and media and entertainment, whether video editing or image creation, and is AMD's workstation solution for professional VR content creation.
Applications for developer kits are now being accepted. These are available for $9,999. Full availability is planned for 2017.
26 Comments on AMD Announces the Radeon Pro SSG
I better put on my tinfoil hat, I've exposed myself.
i can see the need for a local cache/buffer so the main pci bus doesnt get saturated while moving/playing data, but 10k american zlots for it is a complete joke, even for the professional market.
also why couldnt they release the cards used to make these like this, in single slot form factor, with a regular bios and sans all the additional professional grade mambo jambo?
Will perhaps bring another evolution in GPU´s.
Also a TB of M.2 storage is super cheap compared to the same amount of RAM and its needed platform.
Edit: It has two x4 M.2 slots which will be connected to 8 lanes of the GPU with a PLX chip or something like that..
That thing might be a small revolution for the pro market...
AMD is aiming to make affordable graphics card for professional.
www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/creative-hardware/amd-introduces-low-cost-radeon-pro-wx-graphics-cards-as-it-kills-firepro-line/
twitter.com/FudzillaNews/status/757774661081899008
Add to that the manufacturing cost of a gpu+ RAID 0 of two samsung 512 Gb 950 pro directly accessible by the gpu on the same board, +the ultra premium rma you get from a professional product.
Appenrently this will be actually faster than trying to get the gpu to access memory from another pci-e storage. From what I've read only really heavy rendering (like state of the art Hollywood VFX) really need something like this.
For big data, weather and all this is very interesting as well, and this is exactly where the big money is for AMD. They are doing a very good job with new and interesting things.