AMD demos Cinema 2.0 in Mumbai

MUMBAI, INDIA: AMD demonstrated a milestone achievement in ultra-realistic and interactive visual computing through the processing power of its teraFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second) graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870.

Until today, content developers had to choose between cinematic realism rendered offline and absent of the rewarding sensory experience of interactivity, or an interactive experience that fell well short of photorealism. Today’s demonstration of what AMD terms the “Cinema 2.0 experience” punches a sizeable hole in the sensory barrier that separates today’s visionary content creators and the interactive experiences they desire to create for audiences around the world. The Cinema 2.0 demo shows the fusion of dynamic real-time interactivity with convincing cinematic digital effects that deliver environments rivaling the realism of video.

The AMD advancements in processing technology can now begin combining with the artistic passion of top ‘Bollywood’ movie directors, visual effects companies and game developers across India.

Dasaradha Gude, Managing Director, AMD India commented on how technology is increasingly closing the gap between cinema and gaming, revolutionizing the way they are being created and experienced in India. “You're passive when you watch films. The game industry is interactive. But there are also limitations in video games. They don't perfectly match the visual impact of cinema,” Gondal explained. “In each genre, the content directors want to take the experience to that next level, but until today, they just didn't have the technology. The Holy Grail of Cinema 2.0 is taking the visual fidelity of films and pairing it with the interactivity of games, blurring the line between the two."

“With Cinema 2.0 you won’t just watch movies, you’ll play in them,” said Raja Koduri, chief technology officer, Graphics Processing Group, AMD. “Imagine the ability to look around the environment in a sci-fi movie, put yourself in the driver’s seat in a race scene, duck behind things and pop up to see what’s going on in an intense gun fight, all of these things are possible with Cinema 2.0. The challenge for any director has always been taking a wonderful vision in the canvas of the mind and translating that to film for the audience to see. Cinema 2.0 breaks down the time and cost barriers of getting a scene or shot that’s ‘just right’, and what’s better, allows audiences to dive deeper into the experience to explore every part of that director’s vision.”

The secret of Cinema 2.0 is the blending of highly complex and realistic graphics that traditionally are the exclusive domain of blockbuster films, with the dynamic 3D interactivity of popular video games. Before now, a typical computer-generated scene could take up to 30 hours to render each frame on CPUs. To achieve the smooth interactivity seen in today’s games, a minimum of 25 to 30 frames per second of rendering speed is needed. Based on these numbers, conventional wisdom amongst prominent game developers and expert computer graphics artists estimated a Cinema 2.0-like technological milestone to be up to 10 years away.

TeraFLOPS AMD Chip accelerates Cinema 2.0 into present

AMD recently introduced the world’s highest performing graphics processor, a chip more powerful than every generation of video game console ever brought to market combined, with one full teraFLOPS of processing power per chip. This technology is available as the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and the ATI Radeon HD 4870.

AMD technology represents one foundational part of the ecosystem needed for Cinema 2.0, with the upcoming AMD graphics processor serving as a grand canvas for leading content creators. To bring Cinema 2.0 to life as a mainstream phenomenon, AMD is collaborating with movie directors and game developers, as well as software developers making the tools to harness many teraFLOPS of real-time visual computing power.