HP crams Fermi-based Quadro 5000M GPU inside 17-inch EliteBook

By Vlad Savov

posted July 28th 2010 4:37AM

Gotta live up to the name, right HP? NVIDIA's new pro graphics solution for mobile creatives, the Quadro 5000M, was unsheathed only yesterday but HP appears to have been first in line to get some of that new 40nm goodness. Electronista reports that the world leader in PC shipments is readying a 5000M solution for its 8740w EliteBook, which will bring 320 CUDA cores and a jumbo 2GB of dedicated memory to the party. That comes replete with the latest DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 compatibility, naturally, as well as a bunch of pro-friendly computational enhancements. Dell's also going to be offering a 5000M-equipped rig, but lest you get too excited, bear in mind that getting the current best Quadro-equipped 17-incher from HP costs north of $3,000, so affordability is clearly not a priority here. Skip past the break for NVIDIA's joyous press release announcing the new Quadro chips.

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New NVIDIA Fermi-class Quadro Launches the Era of Computational Visualization

First GPUs to Combine ECC, Double Precision Floating Point and Massive Geometry Processing, Delivering Five Times Faster 3D Performance, Eight Times Faster Simulation Performance and Immersive Stereoscopic 3D

SIGRRAPH 2010, LOS ANGELES - July 27, 2010 - NVIDIA (Booth #717) today launched the era of the 'computational visualization workstation' for designers, engineers, researchers and animators by introducing its Quadro® graphics processing units (GPUs) based on NVIDIA® Fermi architecture, and by also introducing the new NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Pro solution. The new Quadro GPUs deliver performance that is up to five times faster for 3D applications and up to eight times faster for computational simulation1, shattering previous benchmarks.

The NVIDIA Quadro Plex 7000 array, and Quadro 6000, Quadro 5000 and Quadro 4000 GPUs feature the new NVIDIA® Scalable Geometry Engines and leverage NVIDIA Application Acceleration Engines (AXE) to enable the world's fastest performance across a broad range of CAD, DCC and visualization applications2. Rated at an unheard of 1.3 billion triangles per second in raw performance3, the Quadro 6000 enables users to interactively work with models and scenes that are five times more complex than ever before.

"For over a decade Quadro has been the choice of professionals around the world. We've also built Engines like AXE to enable the creation of next-gen applications," said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. "When you couple these technologies with our Fermi architecture, the result is a new Quadro family that's exponentially better than anything the market has ever seen."

Redesigned from the Ground Up to Accelerate Entire Workflows
Combining high performance computing capabilities with advanced visualization, the new Quadro GPU is the world's first professional graphics solution with Error Correction Codes (ECC) memory and fast, IEEE double precision floating point performance. These are intended for applications demanding the highest accuracy, such as medical imaging, finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics.

"In high-end visual effects development, fast iteration is essential," said Olivier Maury, research and development engineer, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). "By using NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, we are seeing up to eight iterations each day of complex fire, dust and air simulations, representing speed improvements of ten to fifteen times. NVIDIA CUDA and Quadro GPUs have entirely changed the way we solve complex visual effects challenges."

The new Quadro GPUs are built on industry standards, including OpenGL 4.1, DirectX 11, DirectCompute and OpenCL. In addition, Quadro leverages technologies that are unique to NVIDIA – such as the company's portfolio of Application Acceleration Engines (AXE) and NVIDIA CUDA™ parallel processing architecture. The result is that software developers are able to create and deliver the next-generation of professional applications that incorporate compute-intensive tasks. Among these tasks are ray tracing, physics simulation, computational fluid dynamics and real-time video effects processing.

"NVIDIA isn't just working on building better graphics hardware, but the software tools needed to drive the needed advancements that are now changing the industry," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst, Enderle Group. "NVIDIA was committed to building tool after tool this past decade in order to drive the market where they needed it to go, and their efforts are paying off."

The new Quadro professional solutions introduced today include:

Scalable Visualization Systems:
Quadro Plex 7000, with 12 GB (total) of memory and 896 CUDA cores

Board and Desktop Workstation Solutions:
Quadro 6000, with 6 GB of GDDR5 memory and 448 CUDA cores
Quadro 5000, with 2.5 GB of GDDR5 memory and 352 CUDA cores
Quadro 4000, with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and 256 CUDA cores

Mobile Workstations:
Quadro 5000M, mobile workstation GPU with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and 320 CUDA cores

Additionally, all Quadro products are compatible with the new NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro active shutter-glasses solution, also announced today, for the highest-quality stereoscopic 3D immersive experience.

Widespread Adoption
Workstation OEMs and System Integrators, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, BOXX Technologies and NextComputing, are among those that are offering the newest Quadro solutions. Quadro products are also available from value added resellers through master distributors PNY Technologies in North America and Europe, Leadtek in Asia Pacific, and ELSA in Japan.

"As the first professional-class GPUs to integrate high performance computing with advanced visualization, NVIDIA Quadro combined with Dell Precision workstations are poised to transform workflows," said Greg Weir, senior manager, Dell Precision Workstations Product and ISV Marketing. "With this technology, we are enabling our design, research, animation and film customers to deliver higher quality results in less time."

"NVIDIA continues to push the envelope on delivering cutting-edge graphics solutions,"said Rob Herman, director of product marketing, worldwide ThinkStation Business Unit, Lenovo. We're actively incorporating these latest graphics into our newly upgraded ThinkStation C20 and D20 workstations to deliver innovative, 'visual supercomputers' to our customers."

Availability and Pricing
The Quadro 4000 ($1,199 MSRP, USD) and Quadro 5000 ($2,249 MSRP, USD) are available immediately through all channels. The Quadro 6000 ($4,999 MSRP, USD) and Quadro Plex 7000 ($14,500 MSRP, USD) will be available this fall. Mobile workstations based on the Quadro 5000M will be available in the third quarter of 2010 from HP and Dell.

The newest Quadro solutions are being featured at SIGGRAPH 2010 in the NVIDIA booth, #717, South Hall, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, from July 27-29, 2010. To learn more, visit: www.nvidia.co.uk/quadro. Follow NVIDIA Quadro on YouTube, and Twitter: @NVIDIAQuadro.