Nvidia Unveils New Workstation Platform

Faster GPUs will improve special effects, graphics, virtual sets and other video related solutions for broadcasters and producers

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/7/2012 7:03:10 PM

Nvidia has announced improvements to its second generation of its workstation platform, Nvidia Maximus, that now include support for include its Kepler-based graphics processing units (GPUs) that offer the company's fastest, most efficient solutions.

The introduction is important for broadcasters and content producers because processing and speed improvements in graphics processing units in recent years has led to dramatic improvements in broadcast graphics, virtual sets, special effects, video processing and other solutions used by the production and TV sectors. Such improvements have also helped lower the costs of many of these solutions.

Nvidia first introduced the Maximus platform in November. It speeds up processing by giving users the ability to simultaneously perform complex analysis and visualization on a single machine, noted Greg Estes, industry executive for media and entertainment at Nvidia, in an interview. By simultaneously handling interactive graphics and the computing required to simulate or render them, the platform streamlines workflows.

With the second generation of Maximus, computational work is assigned to run on the new NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU computing accelerator, freeing up the new NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU to handle graphics functions.

The Nvidia Quadro K5000 GPU's features also include "bindless textures" that give users the ability to reference over 1 million textures directly in memory while reducing CPU overhead, which could result in significant improvements in such broadcast technologies as virtual sets and graphics.

It also uses FXAA/TXAA film-style anti-aliasing technologies to improve image quality.

Second generation NVIDIA Maximus-powered desktop workstations featuring the new NVIDIA Quadro K5000 will have a suggested manufacturers retail price of $2,249 when they become available in December; the system with the Nvidia Tesla K20 GPU will run $3,199.