In addition to the announcement of the Radeon Pro WX accelerators in the last quarter year based on the Polaris architecture, AMD during the Siggragraph reported on the work on Radeon Pro SSG — fundamentally new «solid -state graphic card», created with the sight to process GPU huge data arrays.
We are talking about an accelerator that will receive 1 terabyte of quick energy -dependent memory for data storage (we can assume that we are talking about nand). GPU will be connected to this mass of memory directly through its own PCIE tire. For comparison: the flagship accelerator AMD of the previous generation, FirePro W9100, includes 32 GB of memory GDDR5.
In traditional architecture, when GPU needs information that is absent in video memory, a request to the CPU is sent, which receives the necessary data from the RAM (or if there is no — from the drive), and transfers them GPU. This approach can sometimes seriously limit graphics performance. In the new AMD GPU-technology, the graphic accelerator will receive a whole terabyte of their own additional memory buffer: when the GPU needs information, it will be claimed from its own huge SSD array, and only if it is absent in an extended buffer will there be a request for CPU.
To demonstrate the advantages of the maximum availability of large data arrays for GPU, the company showed a demonstration in which the 8K file is processed in a professional video editor. Without a Pro SSG card, the demonstration showed only 17 frames/s, while with direct GPU access to a large volume of fast flash memory, the application could process the same video with a frequency of 90 frames/s.
AMD suggests that this approach can change the principles of professionals with large data arrays in the field of video processing 8K, high-resolution rendering, creating VR content and will significantly increase the prospects for GPU-calculations in science, medicine and the nephe-chemical industry. So far, we are not talking about the final product that is scheduled for 2017: interested developers can receive a prototype Radeon Pro SSG, provided that they are ready to give $ 10,000 for this card.
Source:
- AMD