By Sandeep Gupte, General Manager of Professional Graphics at AMD.

This week marks the annual event called SIGGRAPH 2011 taking place this year in Vancouver, British Columbia.  SIGGRAPH is our industry’s premiere conference for the latest in 3D graphics and related technology.  AMD FirePro™ professional graphics team will be there in force, highlighting how software companies use AMD’s professional graphics products to deliver exceptional creative tools along with a unique user experience for digital design professionals.  If you’re attending, come by the AMD booth (#631) and experience it first-hand.

A centerpiece of the our booth is the AMD Theater where we’ll host demos and presentations by Autodesk^®, OPTIS^®, Chaos Group^®, and other leaders in computer graphic design software. Download an AMD Theater schedule for more details.

An exciting new feature of our booth at Siggraph this year is the AMD Experience Zone, where experts from AMD, Autodesk^®, Luxology^®, and others will offer hands-on training sessions.  Each station will be equipped with HP Z workstations featuring three ZR displays and powered by AMD FirePro professional graphics.  You can even put your design skills to task by signing up for one of the AMD FirePro “FireDrill” speed modeling contests. Take a look at the Experience Zone schedule to learn more.

We’ll be showcasing our newest AMD FirePro products at SIGGRAPH this year: the AMD FirePro™ V7900 and AMD FirePro™ V5900 professional graphics cards. We produced these powerful solutions for designers to help them create without compromise or limitations.

These new offerings  are part of a complete line of AMD FirePro professional graphics products that can power up to 6 displays from a single card^* with AMD Eyefinity technology —  helping to transform production workflow, boost productivity and minimize the costs of a multi-display configuration. Both the AMD Theater and the AMD Experience Zone will feature AMD Eyefinity technology for attendees to see and to test drive.

We’re also very excited to be featuring several software companies that have developed products on the OpenCL™ industry standard this year. OpenCL™ has really come of age as a critical tool to facilitate development of powerful software. We’re proponents of industry standards like OpenCL because they can simplify programming and remove barriers caused by proprietary technologies, which can restrict a developer’s creativity.

So you can see AMD has a lot going at the event. With new AMD FirePro products and software company demonstrations, plus a lot more, it’s clear that AMD has something for everyone at SIGGRAPH 2011. Hope to see you there.

Sandeep Gupte is the General Manager for Professional Graphics at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

* AMD Eyefinity technology works with applications that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort connectors, and/or DisplayPort compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort connector(s), are required.  AMD Eyefinity technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled AMD FirePro™ graphics card with Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems – the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase.  SLS (“Single Large Surface”) functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.