April 1, 2010 is a day to remember. It was the day we introduced the world’s most powerful professional graphics solution ever.[1] Following in the successful footsteps of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 consumer graphics family, which put AMD firmly in the leadership position, AMD brought the same innovations and raw graphics and compute performance to the professional market.

The ATI FirePro™ V8800 features the industry’s highest memory bandwidth and stream processors, giving professionals 2.6 teraflops of compute power − more than double the compute capability of our prior generation solution.[2] For professionals who prefer working on multiple monitors and would like increase their display real estate without the cost and complexity often associated with competing solutions, the ATI FirePro V8800 with ATI Eyefinity technology allows professionals to drive up to four independent 30” displays at the highest resolutions.[3] With this affordable, single card solution, professionals can render and manipulate complex designs in real-time.

We held a small event at AMD Sunnyvale on April 1 and OEMs, ISVs, technology partners and end users showed up in force to help us demonstrate what’s possible with next generation ATI FirePro professional graphics, including HP, Dell, GE Healthcare, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks, Ostendo Technologies, Scalable Display Technologies, TurboSquid and Kirkham Motorsports. This was the first opportunity we’ve had in quite some time to bring together the professional graphics ecosystem members to see and hear about how they can benefit from ATI FirePro professional graphics and ATI Eyefinity technology.

We had 12 demos running training simulation, CAD and DCC applications in several multi-display configurations, including three, four, five and six display configurations. We’ll be releasing video footage of these demos in the coming weeks but we’d like to give you a little taste today. Having a seamless visual workflow is critical for professionals, especially for texture artists. Take a look at this short video and see how ATI Eyefinity can streamline workflows and increase productivity:

AMD is on track to deliver the right mix of innovation and performance to the professional workstation market, and I’d like to take a moment to personally thank all of the industry partners, customers and end users who joined us at our launch event. According to Jon Peddie Research, AMD is gaining acceptance in the high and ultra high end space of the market, and we’re confident the ATI FirePro V8800, and the rest of the next generation family, positions AMD Professional Graphics for growth in 2010.

Janet Matsuda is Senior Director, Professional Graphics at AMD
Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

[1] Based on comparison of 1600 stream processors and 147.2GB/s memory bandwidth for ATI FirePro™ V8800 vs. 240 CUDA processors and 102GB/s for NVIDIA QuadroFX 5800, as reported on http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html as of 3/16/10. As of 3/1/2010, ATI FirePro™ V8800 has the highest number of stream processors of any graphics card.

[2] Based on 1600 stream processors for ATI FirePro™ V8800 vs. 800 stream processors for V8750.

[3] ATI Eyefinity technology can support multiple displays using a single enabled ATI FirePro™ professional graphics card; the number of supported displays varies by card model. Microsoft® Windows® 7, Window Vista®, or Linux® is required in order to support more than 2 displays. Depending on the card model, native DisplayPort™ connectors and/or certified DisplayPort™ active or passive adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your card’s DisplayPort™ or MiniDisplayPort™ connector(s) may be required. See www.amd.com/firepro for details.