Interesting use for nvidia GPU

rmack350 wrote on 9/6/2004, 11:26 AM
I ran across this article at toms hardware and thought it had some interesting implications for the future of desktop NLEs.

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040902_135943.html

The article is about a small startup that is working on software to use nvidia graphics processors for audio processing. The advantage is that the GPU is a lot faster at what it does than a CPU.

The article points out that PCI Express cards are more promising because they have equally high throughput in both directions-to and from the CPU .

To me, this implies that we may see more mass market and standards based graphics processsing that is usable for NLEs. I wouldn't count on it too soon but maybe we'd start to see some first steps by NAB.

Rob Mack

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/6/2004, 11:53 AM
I remember hearing about nvidia boasting stuff like this with their 6x00 GPU. It sounds pretty useful, but I don't think it will really be used in the game cards.

But, ATI has the whole AIW line. Maybe they will come out with something like this for the PCI Express AIW card, whenever that it (i love those cards!)
rmack350 wrote on 9/6/2004, 1:01 PM
Well, the interesting thing is that this company is using the GPU for audio processing. Not at all what it's meant for. So there are a couple of ways we could see this go using PCI-e cards:

--Some enterprising developer writes FX plugins that use a graphic's card's GPU. Premiere seems to deal with this sort of arrangement. Vegas doesn't or hasn't yet so it may be of no use to us
--Microsoft and the card developers actually agree on some sort of standardized system (directX?) allowing software to use a GPU if it's available. This seems fairly likely and is the sort of model that Vegas is likely to lean on
--a company with their own hardware and software offerings does the development. Think Matrox, for instance. Probably no benefit for Vegas there.

The bidirectional throughput on the PCI-e slot is there for a reason. I'm sure it'll be used. I noticed a comment on the Blackmagicdesign forum that they're focusing on this architecture now.

At this point it's idle conjecture on my part but I'm hoping that the madison folks are being the squeekiest wheels they can in order to get developement going in a way that benefits them.

Rob Mack