NVIDIA Launches Interactive Ray Tracing Engine
 NEW
ORLEANS, Louisiana (SIGGRAPH), Aug 4, 2009 - NVIDIA, the leader in GPU
computing, today introduced the NVIDIA®® OptiX™ ray tracing engine, part of
a suite of application acceleration engines for software developers. NVIDIA
acceleration engines make it easy to incorporate valuable, high-performance
capabilities into applications, while simultaneously reducing development
time.
NVIDIA application acceleration engines unveiled at SIGGRAPH 2009 include:
- NVIDIA OptiX engine for real-time ray tracing
- NVIDIA SceniX engine for managing 3D data and scenes
- NVIDIA CompleX engine for scaling performance across multiple GPUs
- NVIDIA PhysX 64-bit engine for real-time, hyper-realistic physical and
environmental effects
As the world's first interactive ray tracing engine to leverage the GPU, the
NVIDIA OptiX engine is a programmable ray tracing pipeline enabling software
developers to easily bring new levels of realism to their applications using
traditional C programming. By tapping into the massively parallel computing
power of NVIDIA Quadro processors, the OptiX engine greatly accelerates the ray
tracing used across a spectrum of disciplines, including: photorealistic
rendering, automotive styling, acoustical design, optics simulation, volume
calculations and radiation research. Application developers are utilizing the
OptiX engine to redefine what's possible for designers, engineers and
researchers.
"In one year, NVIDIA has gone from proving interactive GPU ray tracing is
possible, to making it available to all," said Jon Peddie, founder and president
of Jon Peddie Research. "Intricate design tasks, such as examining the play of
reflection and refraction across surfaces and within glass, can now be examined
in real-time by utilizing the OptiX acceleration engine running on Quadro
processors. This is a phenomenal milestone for developers and designers alike."
"Thousands of applications are being created today that harness the
phenomenal power of GPUs, a clear sign that GPU computing has reached a tipping
point. The world of computing is shifting from host-bound processing on CPUs to
balanced co-processing on GPUs and CPUs," said Jeff Brown, general manager,
Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. "NVIDIA application acceleration engines arm
developers with the tools they need to further revolutionize both real-time
graphics and advanced data analysis."
The NVIDIA SceniX
scene management engine provides the interactive core for demanding real-time,
professional 3D graphics applications. Whether used in leading products such as
RTT DeltaGen, Autodesk Showcase and Anark Media Studio, or in scores of in-house
tools used for advanced visualization, simulation, broadcast graphics, medical
imagery, and energy exploration, developers look to the SceniX engine for the
interactive framework to manage 3D data and convey results in real-time at high
fidelity.
The NVIDIA CompleX
scene scaling engine enables applications to maintain interactivity when working
with extremely large and complex models. By automatically utilizing the combined
memory and processing power of multiple GPUs within Quadro Plex visual computing
systems, applications that utilize the CompleX engine enable users to explore
and visualize all their data in full context, instead of piecemeal.
The NVIDIA PhysX
64-bit physics engine brings hyper-realistic, real-time physics to professional
applications. Already a proven and popular solution within the computer games
industry, the 64-bit version of PhysX will permit more accurate calculations on
far larger data sets for engineers, designers and animators wanting to
interrogate their data, model physical properties and breathe life into their
work.
"The SceniX acceleration engine has been a critical part of our success in
the automotive styling industry," said Christian Matzen, COO, ICIDO, a global
leader in virtual engineering solutions. "Based on the ease of integrating OptiX
within SceniX, and its stunning visual results, we plan on delivering
interactive ray tracing to our design customers later this year."
"The CompleX engine is essential for our application to accommodate the
massive data sets of customers like StatoilHydro," said Thorolf Horn Tonjum,
Director of R&D Stormfjord, a Norwegian development company serving the
visualization needs of the energy industry. "By using the SceniX engine to power
our scene graph, we easily incorporated the CompleX engine to keep navigation
smooth for 10 GB scenes, and the PhysX 64-bit engine to study the challenges off
shore oil rigs must face. These engines from NVIDIA accelerate not only our
product, but also our time to market." NVIDIA will be showcasing the new suite
of application acceleration engines this week at the SIGGRAPH 2009 conference
and exhibition in New Orleans; booth #2101. For more information on NVIDIA at
SIGGRAPH, visit:
http://www.nvidia.com/engines.
Pricing and Availability
NVIDIA application acceleration engines are available from the NVIDIA
Developer Zone at no charge. The SceniX and CompleX engines can be downloaded at
http://developer.nvidia.com/page/home.html. The OptiX and PhysX 64-bit
engines will be available in fall of 2009. Interactive ray tracing examples
using the pre-release OptiX engine can be downloaded at
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/optix-examples.html and run on NVIDIA
Quadro FX processors.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies
and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates
breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game
consoles and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market
with its GeForce®® graphics products, the professional design and visualization
market with its Quadro®® graphics products and the high-performance computing
market with its Tesla™ computing solutions products. NVIDIA is headquartered in
Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas.
For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.
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