Professional Graphics CGW Webinar

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Professional GraphicsCGW Webinar
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Evolution of Professional GraphicsYesterdays
Landscape

• Pro graphics distinguished from
  consumer/corporate graphics by most every metric
• Vendor, chips, boards, bus, memory, video I/O,
  OS, middleware/APIs, usage, performance, price
• Excusive domain of Traditional Proprietary
  Workstation (TPW) vendors
• Sgi, Sun, HP, DEC and IBM drove the innovation
• Proprietary UNIX/VMS were the only OSes

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Evolution of Professional GraphicsTodays
Landscape

• Hardware migration from in-house to IHV
• IHVs are vertical chips and AIBs
• TPW vendors no longer build graphics chips
• Enable IHV hardware with drivers for proprietary
  Unix
• A few unique high-end board configurations
• Gaming is driving innovation
• E.g. programmable shaders, floating-point
  precision
• Even 1K multi-board monsters Alienware and
  Nvidias SLI
• Much harder to distinguish from consumer AIBs
• Cost premium has dropped considerably

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Graphics Hardware DifferentiationProfessional
vs. Consumer

• Brand
• Reliability
• ISV certification
• Customer support
• Breadth of driver support
• OpenGL ICDs
• 64-bit Linux and Windows drivers
• Performance and price can be a low priority
• Legacy requirements can sustain lagging hardware

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Graphics Hardware DifferentiationProfessional
vs. Consumer

• Remaining GPU differences artificial and/or minor
• (Virtually) no difference in raw die
• Nvidia and ATI lead with same GPU/VPUs from
  consumer line
• relatively minor driver, package and or
  board-exposed features
• Board-level differences significant at high-end
  only
• Value varies by application
• Physical memory
• DCC and vis-sim have never-ending appetite for
  textures
• Display support optimized for pro applications
• Framelock, genlock, interface type (e.g. SDI)
• Number and datarate of video interfaces
• Ultra-high resolution (e.g. dual dual-link for up
  to 9 Mpixel displays)

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2003 Professional Graphics Hardware Market

• Nearly 2.1 million professional graphics AIBs
  sold
• Almost 1B in revenue
• Legacy in-house graphics from TPW vendors small
  but significant
• Only 5 of units shipped, but 16 of revenue
• Incremental opportunity for IHVs
• Units are in the low-end, but revenue is in the
  mid-range

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JPR Pro Graphics AIB Classes
 Class ASP Range ASP Range
 Class min max
2D 400
Entry-3D 350
Mid-range 350 950
High-end 950 1,500
Ultra High-end 1,500
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Vendor Profile

• 5 (units) and 11 (revenue) share in 2003
• but 26 and 44 unit share in high and ultra-high
• Pro Gfx flagship Realizm
• What sets Realizm apart
• Exclusive focus on professional apps
• Chip-level scalability
• 16-bit FP format in frame buffer
• Virtual, paged video memory
• Where 3DLabs is going
• Fighting hard to keep high-end dominance
• Largest physical memory, Multi-chip AIBs, Genlock
  / framelock
• Realizm trickle-down to mid-range and low-end?

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Vendor Profile

• 17 (units) and 15 (revenue) share in 2003
• Unbranded presence in 2D applications
• Pro graphics flagship Fire GL 7100
• What sets Fire GL apart
• A strong mid-range focus (31)
• Subjective edge in quality and quality/performance
  
• Perf/W has won mobile and embedded sockets
• ATI dominant in mobile workstations (67)
• Where ATI is going
• Best positioned to ride growth in mobile
  workstation
• Can it (should it) ignore high end of market?

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Vendor Profile

• JPR estimates 9 (units) and 11 (revenue) share
  in 2003
• But 17 in 2D segment
• Slanted heavily toward direct sales
• Not directly targeting power renderers
• Appeal on basis of image quality and specific,
  niche features
• Where is Matrox going?
• Road ahead looks difficult in keeping pace on
  GPUs
• Last major introduction, Parhelia, was out in May
  2002
• Move to programmable shaders and floating-point
  requires overhaul
• Some key competitive advantages going away
• More 2D competition from Nvidia, ATI and maybe
  soon IGPs
• Fewer areas of differentiation, e.g. super-high
  res (9 Mpixel)
• OEM presence declining
• Continued focus on custom-fit solutions for large
  customers

Matrox is private and does not disclose
financials
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Vendor Profile

• 67 (units) and 47 (revenue) share in 2003
• Pro gfx flagship Quadro FX 4000 (NV40 GPU)
• What sets Nvidia apart
• Breadth of offerings, entry to ultra-high end
• Shader Model 3.0 vs. 2.0
• SLI Board level scalablity
• Custom offerings for DCC, vis-sim
• Where Nvidia is going
• Trying to take share in existing segments
• From 3Dlabs in the high/ultra-high end
• Think margin, not units
• Sales synergy
• From ATI in the mobile space (MXM and Axiom)
• Getting GPUs into new segments, like render farms

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Pro Graphics Technology Trends

• Final stage of migration to fully programmable
  architecture
• Richer, cleaner programming large code,
  predication, branching
• Changing how graphics hardware vendors will
  compete
• Leveraging parallelism
• Todays flagship GPUs 6 vertex and 16 pixel
  pipelines (ATI/Nvidia)
• Chip-level (3DLabs) and Board-level (Nvidia)
  scalability
• Continuing to annex upstream processing
• Physics, kinematics, simulation, animation,
  tessellation
• Vehicle for general purpose computing (GPGPU),
• Why Intels biggest threat may someday be not AMD
  but Nvidia
• Floating-point precision
• GDDR3 memory

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PCI Express for Graphics

• Serial, point-to-point, packets
• More a network interconnect than a traditional
  I/O bus
• Variable number of lanes
• Graphics design center 16-lane
• More bandwidth, but remember
• Directionally constrained 4GB/s up, 4GB/s down
• In-band command, control and packet overhead
  reduces bw
• Just in time to carry the load
• Most apps on most hardware today not constrained
  by AGP 8X
• Some may be it all depends
• HD video editing
• Hybrid CPU/GPU render for DCC

Src PCI-SIG
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PCI Express Graphics AIBs

• Form factor derived from PCI
• Power budgets
• 10W 1 cards (lt 6.6 length)
• 25W 1 cards (gt 7.0 length), 4 cards, 8
  cards, 16 low-profile graphics and 16 server
  I/O
• 75W full-height graphics cards
• High-end Graphics Spec will allow auxiliary power
  for up to 150W

Src PCI-SIG
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PCI Express Connectors

• Up-plugging allowed
• OEMs encouraged to support wider connectors
• Link width not determined by connector or
  interface, negotiated at config time
• More end-user flexibility
• Allows dual high-bw ( AGP 8X) graphics AIBs

Src PCI-SIG
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GPU Interfaces to PCI ExpressTo bridge or not to
bridge

• Initial plans spurred some mud-slinging
• ATI planned all native PCIe interfaces
• Nvidia indicated plans to bridge with on-board
  HSI (AGP 16X)
• 3DLabs Realizm depends on configuration
• In the end, it will most likely be a non-issue
• Speedup of full-speed PCIe interface is exception
  and debatable
• ATI will likely bridge back to AGP
• HSI does not preclude native PCIe NV45 is out
  already
• 3DLabs likely to fill in low-end PCIe offerings,
  too
• Dell should ship Nvidia and ATI PCIe AIBs July,
  3DLabs later this quarter

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Pro Graphics Market Trend Forecast

• Strong growth in Mobile Workstations
• Final phase in transition to all-IHV graphics
• AIBs configured for specific applications
• Genlock and SDI for DCC studio apps
• Framelock for vis-sim and wall-display
  applications
• IGPs for pro graphics? Never say never.
• What about Grantsdale for 2D workstation apps?
• Why Nvidia/ATI/3DLabss biggest competitor may
  someday be Intel
• GPUs to final frame rendering?

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Nvidias Application-specific AIB Configurations
Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 SDI I/O
Nvidia Quadro FX 3000G I/O
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GPUs in the Render Farm?

• Graphics hardware is absent in the render farm
• ISVs/IHVs looking to final-frame speedup as well
• Enablers
• Primary advent of programmable hardware shaders
  with compilers
• Secondary FP color precision, more flexible
  programming (larger code, predication, branching)
• Nvidia Gelato, Mental Images Mental Ray 3.3
• Vendors would welcome 10Ks of incremental
  professional GPUs
• Not a slam-dunk
• Global illumination, raycasting techniques (e.g
  raytracing and volume rendering) dont map very
  well (at least not yet) to GPUs

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Technology ForecastImpact of Longhorn

• Image quality
• Gamma, sRGB, 32-bit FP, Text enhancements
• Virtualization to support Avalon, Presentation
  Manager
• Virtual memory, mostly under OS/driver
  interaction
• GPU Hyper Threading-like context management
• Pixel rates will be especially stressed
• Lots of temporary textures, surfaces to be
  warped, composited, blended
• Dual, cascaded vertex shaders
• Moving to (optional) programmable hardware
  tessellation
• Security stability
• simpler drivers, hang prevention
• OpenGL ICDs should be upgraded for Longhorn (but
  not required)

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Windows Graphics FoundationLonghorn and Beyond
Src Microsoft, WinHEC 2004
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Backup Slides
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Hardware Differentiation vs. Consumer Disappearing
Historical Differentiator Future differentiator?
OpenGL vs. DirectX Minor, esp. with OGL2
Anti-aliased points / lines No. Can be rendered with shaded polygons even enhanced (e.g. miter)
Rendering performance Very little performance driven by games
Color fidelity Very little internal FP32, stored as FP16 (display?) attention to sRGB and gamma becoming pervasive
Antialiasing Very little, gt samples at high end (highest end is software)
Display resolution Yes, at the high end with 9 MPix
2nd order rendering features e.g. two-sided lighting, user clip planes Very little implemented with shader
Multi-display Little even IGPs going dual-display
Genlock, Framelock Yes, at high end
Multi-chip implementations Yes, at high end
Overlay planes Yes, but trivial to implement
Stereo Yes, but relatively easy to implement