NVIDIA Tesla at SIGGRAPH 2011 and the multi-monitor question

Genevieve Johnson 24 Aug, 2011 at 4:38pm ET Article published in Tech

A couple weeks ago I spent a large amount of time with the nice people from NVIDIA at their SIGGRAPH booth. They were kind enough to indulge me in answering a couple of questions about their Tesla technology and a bit about what they have in store for the future.

Tesla is essentially a high-end workstation GPU with all of its video ports and drawing responsibilities stripped off of it. This might sound a little odd, but unhooking the card from its drawing responsibilities gives you nearly 500 cores with nothing to do but crunch numbers. These cores are then multi-threaded out to equal nearly 5000 cores. Hook that to their top-end workstation GPU, the NVIDIA Quadro 6000, and what you have is extremely precise computational potential at a blazing hot speed.

Tesla specs

	Tesla C2070	Tesla C2050
Peak double precision floating point performance	515 Gigaflops	515 Gigaflops
Peak single precision floating point performance	1030 Gigaflops	1030 Gigaflops
CUDA cores	448	448
Memory size (GDDR5)	6 GigaBytes	3 GigaBytes
Memory bandwidth *(ECC off)	144 GBytes/sec	144 GBytes/sec
Display support	Dual-link DVI-I Max display resolution @ 60 Hz: 2560×1600

Why would you want this, though? This is not a setup for everyday computer users and gamers, that’s for certain. In gaming, things are happening so fast, you only need an overall sense of “pretty.” By pretty, I mean as long as everything looks alright on your monitor, everything is going well. If your GPU is botching a pixel here or there, no big deal. You can still get the frag.

However, when working with extremely precise dynamic particles or biochemistry simulations, you can’t settle for “pretty.” Everything has to be dead-on accurate. This is where a Tesla and Quadro solution can really shine—particularly if you need to be working in real time.

The question of multiple monitors

Tactfully, mind you, I also asked the following: “What if I would like a three monitor setup?” The response was that NVIDIA has found that, for most people, workflow is optimized with a two-monitor setup. At any given point one tends to be ignoring the third monitor. They did, however, hint they have a multi-monitor graphic solution in the works that blows anything existing out of the water.

For more on the Tesla, you can read up at NVIDIA.

Comments

24 Aug 2011 ~ 4:47pm Tushon I'm rather curious about what they have coming that will blow Eyefinity "out of the water". I'm dubious, but always looking forward to the next big thing.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 5:39pm Bandrik I'm with Tushon here. Indulge me, NVIDIA. Because I'd like to see what would be better than Eyefinity at the same price point.

I can just see it now...

Introducing NVIDIA Pylon, the new revolutionary technical breakthrough that allows you up not three, but three HUNDRED displays! Finally, a multi-monitor technology that will make Eyefinity users green with envy (SEE WHAT WE DID THERE, A PUN, WE SO WITTY)! When you purchase a NVIDIA Pylon-certified display, you're getting a display with a built-in NVIDIA GPU that scales indefinitely! Prices for these displays start at the low, low price of $2200!
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:08pm primesuspect (in b4 7 monitors)
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:09pm Thrax In after 36 monitors.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:15pm UPSLynx Their solution for blowing current multi-monitor technology out of the water is more than likely a DisplayPort 1.2 implementation.

Old.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:17pm PirateNinja *SPOILER ALERT*
I actually was exposed to Nvidia's technology that is blowing multi-monitor usage out of the water. It is an entire visual response system that basically gives you 360 degrees of visual usage along with 3D.
Custom input systems allow you to control the complete 3D, full range of vision, experience. It's nothing short of amazing, you can have a glimpse
here

Edit: Forgot to mention it will be installed exclusively by geeksquad
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:32pm Bandrik You know what, all kidding aside, I would love to have a 5760x1200 curved display. One single bezel, but wraps around in an arced shape. I hear they're becoming reality, if not already happened. If that's the case, now make them sub-$1000.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 6:44pm Tushon that was lulzy, pirate.

I just want some Minority report style stuff to become ultra real. We have some hints and snippets, but I want the whole experience.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 7:13pm Bandrik Actually, I've talked with companies that have done that. The reason they don't pursue it further is because everyone that uses it complains of eventual hand fatigue. It's flashy, it's cool, but apparently it's impractical enough that they don't push to market it.

Hopefully with the broad acceptance of tech like Kinect, gesture-based interfaces will develop to something as sexy as Minority Report, while still being practical. That would be awesome.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 7:53pm Tushon I imagine part of the hand fatigue comes from making major gestures (i.e. large or definite gestures with only hands, not stuff involving arm/body movement) repeatedly. Hopefully, detection tech can get better and we'll be able make more minor movements while accomplishing the same goals.
24 Aug 2011 ~ 7:54pm Thrax

Bandrik wrote:

You know what, all kidding aside, I would love to have a 5760x1200 curved display. One single bezel, but wraps around in an arced shape. I hear they're becoming reality, if not already happened. If that's the case, now make them sub-$1000.

Panel vendors are mostly in a race to the bottom. Not in the next 10 years, I'd bet.
25 Aug 2011 ~ 8:39am Snarkasm There was this one... but that's 2880x900. Still, it's curvy, seamless, and impressive.
25 Aug 2011 ~ 1:48pm Bandrik

Snarkasm wrote:

There was this one... but that's 2880x900. Still, it's curvy, seamless, and impressive.

Yep, that's EXACTLY what I want. To take it a step further, I would like a display similar to that, but larger, and for it to be a flexible AMOLED display. Those flexible displays can even roll up like a newspaper, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult to ask for a curved display similar to the Alienware one.

Of course, the only barring issue at this point is... sigh... the price.
1 Sep 2011 ~ 10:54am one234h Pirate, that was great