Adobe Mercury Playback NVIDIA only Legality

[Tom Daigon]

Quadro 4000 is under $1000.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Ben Jones]

“Decent” is the operative word. The quadro 4000 is incredibly slow for GPU based rendering compared to even a 470 GTX (the 470 is roughly 3x faster in blenders cycles renderer (for example).

[Alex Udell]

Open CL is not exactly equivalent to CUDA.

As I understand it, CUDA is based on OPEN CL, but then has additional features on top of that which Adobe can exploit to make use of in Mercury.

So no monopoly case there.

Alex

[Walter Soyka]

[Alex Udell] “CUDA is based on OPEN CL, but then has additional features on top of that which Adobe can exploit to make use of in Mercury.”

CUDA is NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture that allows general purpose on GPUs. OpenCL is a framework that allows heterogeneous computing, meaning the an OpenCL application can process on a CPU or a GPU.

CUDA pre-dates OpenCL by more than a year, and NVIDIA is a major contributor to OpenCL.

What CUDA and OpenCL have in common is their ability to use GPUs for general purpose computing.

[Ben Jones] “Which brought me to the realisation, isn’t it actually illegal to form alliances such as the Nvidia / Adobe one to push out competition? Clearly it is possible to get mercury playback to operate fine on AMD cards, as they support them for macbooks. It is akin to price fixing between suppliers… and monopolistic practices.”

Ben, there’s nothing anti-competitive going on here. Adobe started with CUDA as the basis for GPGPU in the Mercury Playback Engine, and now that OpenCL has matured a bit, they’re adding support for it.

In other words, Adobe is doing the exact opposite of what you’re accusing them of doing.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Warren Eig]

Ben,

If the Quadro 4000 “is incredibly slow for GPU based rendering,” what would you recommend as I use a Mac Pro for my platform. I’m not a PC house here. What would you use in a Mac Pro that has “Decent” GPU based rendering?

Much appreciated,

Warren

Warren Eig
O 310-470-0905

email: warren@babyboompictures.com
website: https://www.babyboompictures.com

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[Chris Borjis]

I don’t know about incredibly slow. Having a Quadro 4000 has
boosted performance tremendously.

The tolerances and precision calculations are higher on Quadro cards.
The “reject” chips from Quadro assembly lines, go to the gaming cards.

but I get what you’re saying. In the same vein, I wish there were more
than 3 officially supported Nvidia cards for the mac.

OpenCL just released an updated version of the specification recently fyi.

[Tom Daigon]

[Chris Borjis] “I don’t know about incredibly slow. Having a Quadro 4000 has
boosted performance tremendously.”

My experience as well. Soon boosting things with the Quadro 4000 and Tesla 2075 “Maximus” configuration, when I make the switch to PC.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Ben Jones]

Good info. Thanks for that.

[Ben Jones]

I know that is the theory, but for example, the Quadro 4000 has 256 CUDA cores.. the 690GTX has 3000 CUDA cores, and they cost about the same amount of money. I have rendered for days on my 470GTX without problem, and had my Quadro 4000 overheat (that was only once on a 35 degree C day admittedly).. I’m assuming because of its incredibly small heatsink in comparison to the 470.

Honestly, a Quadro 4000 is probably plenty for Adobe products, just it really doesn’t cut it when rendering on the GPU in things like blender cycles render. I all just frustrates me. Even the $5000 Quadro 6000 only has 448 CUDA cores (the same as the 470GTX which costs $250 now). IT’s like I either have to spend $20,000 on 4 QUADRO 6000s and get great performance in 1 product, and still get worse performance in blender… or just buy a 690GTX and put up with horrible performance in premier and AE. Or use a computer with a Quadro for adobe and the other one for 3D… but even then, I still take a hit on interface speed.

Bah.

[Ben Jones]

Mac.. not sure. I’m not sure what is compatible.. your problems are probably worse than mine on this one!