At CES, AMD (NYSE: AMD) President and Chief Executive Officer Dirk
Meyer and OTOY Chief Executive Officer Jules Urbach unveiled a plan to
revolutionize the deployment, development and delivery of HD content
through the “AMD Fusion Render Cloud,” a massively-parallel
supercomputer. The announcement took place during AMD’s Industry Insider
Series keynote at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater, where AMD was joined on
stage by industry luminaries such as Lucasfilm, Dell, HP and Electronic
Arts.
“AMD has a long track record in the supercomputing world. Seven out of
10 of the world’s fastest machines, including the fastest two computers
on the planet, are powered by AMD hardware,” said Meyer. “Today, AMD is
pleased to announce a new kind of supercomputer unlike any other ever
built. It is being designed to break the one petaFLOPS barrier, and to
process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics
processors. We anticipate it to be the fastest graphics supercomputer
ever. And it will be powered by OTOY’s software for a singular purpose:
to make HD cloud computing a reality. We plan to have this system ready
by the second half of 2009.”
The system is being designed to enable content providers to deliver
video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive
applications through the Internet “cloud” to virtually any type of
mobile device with a web browser without making the device rapidly
deplete battery life or struggle to process the content. The AMD Fusion
Render Cloud will transform movie and gaming experiences through
server-side rendering – which stores visually rich content in a compute
cloud, compresses it, and streams it in real-time over a wireless or
broadband connection to a variety of devices such as smart phones,
set-top boxes and ultra-thin notebooks. By delivering remotely rendered
content to devices that are unable to store and process HD content due
to such constraints as device size, battery capacity, and processing
power, HD cloud computing represents the capability to bring HD
entertainment to mobile users virtually anywhere.
The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will also enable remote real-time rendering
of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale. Gaming
companies can use the AMD Fusion Render Cloud for developing and
deploying next-generation game content, to serve up virtual world games
with unlimited photo-realistic detail, and take advantage of new
delivery channels as open and diverse as the web itself.
“Hosted on AMD’s powerful new AMD Fusion Render platform, OTOY’s
revolutionary software has given birth to the world’s first practical,
scalable graphics supercomputer capable of true server-side HD cloud
rendering. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will allow directors like Robert
Rodriguez of Troublemaker Studios to break through existing CPU-only and
graphics processor-only render bottlenecks which have imposed
limitations on the creation of true eye-definition assets,” said Charlie
Boswell, Director of Digital Media and Entertainment, AMD.
“I use big technology to stay ahead of the artistic curve and that
technology has been and continues to be AMD’s. Having the means to
create interactive eye-definition movie and game assets with the AMD
Fusion Render Cloud and to then to make them available to a broader
audience through new distribution methods will bring about a renaissance
in content creation and consumption,” said Robert Rodriguez, Director,
Troublemaker Studios. “Imagine watching a movie half-way through on your
cell phone while on the bus ride home, then, upon entering your home or
apartment, switch over to your HD TV and continue watching the same
movie from exactly where you left off, seamlessly, and at full screen
resolution,” continued Boswell. “Imagine playing the most visually
intensive first person shooter game at the highest image quality
settings on your cell phone without ever having to download and install
the software, or use up valuable storage space or battery life with
compute-intensive tasks. Those are just some of the experiences that AMD
and OTOY plan to make possible with HD cloud computing of visually rich
entertainment content.”
“By fusing industry-leading CPU technology with computationally dense,
massively parallel graphics processors, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can
rival the world’s most powerful industrial computing devices, but
require just a fraction of the floor space, power envelope and cost
associated with many of today’s leading supercomputers,” said Jules
Urbach, Chief Executive Officer, OTOY. “Combined with the power of
OTOY’s revolutionary and flexible software platform, the AMD Fusion
Render Cloud can transform the entertainment industry and remove the
technical barriers between consumers and first-rate content experiences.”
The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will be powered by AMD-optimized hardware
including the AMD Phenom™ II processors, AMD 790 chipsets and ATI
Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics processors, for unprecedented compute density
and power efficiency. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud is an excellent
example of AMD’s Fusion strategy, combining its partners’ dreams with
AMD innovation, to bring powerful technologies to mainstream markets
through the combined power of graphics processors and CPUs in a single
platform.
“At Electronic Arts, we have been lucky enough to be a part of the
creation of a number of changes in the world of personal computer
gaming. From the first PCs to CD gaming to the advent of Internet
gaming, we have embraced each new evolution of technology as an
opportunity to bring new experiences to our customers,” said Richard
Hilleman, Chief Creative Officer, Electronic Arts. “OTOY and AMD are at
the cutting edge of thin client gaming, and we look forward to the new
customers we can reach and the new interactive expressions that emerge
from revolutionary technology like the AMD Fusion Render Cloud.”
AMD plans to provide the hardware and engineering resources for the AMD
Fusion Render Cloud, with OTOY providing technical software development
and a middleware layer.
To watch a recorded webcast of Meyer’s keynote address, visit: www.mogulus.com/amdunprocessed.
About OTOY
OTOY is a leading software and content developer and provider of
convergence technologies and special effects for the video game and film
industries. OTOY works with a wide range of studios, game developers and
visualization companies to create leading-edge visual and entertainment
experiences. In 2008, Variety magazine listed OTOY CEO Jules Urbach as
one of Hollywood’s top 10 innovators to watch in the next 12 months.
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company
dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the
next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and
play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.
© 2009 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, ATI, the
ATI logo, AMD Athlon, AMD Phenom, Radeon, and combinations thereof are
trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other marks are used for
informational purposes only and are trademarks of their respective
owners.
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