How about this

[Joseph Owens]

[Simon Blackledge] “aren’t you limited in the bandwidth the expander card goes into”

If you examine all the words typed in the company response, you’ll notice these ones:

“While the argument regarding bus traffic is certainly valid for some applications, Cubix has found that other applications from vendors such as Acceleware and Refractive software (Octane Render) execute mainly on the GPUs, not on the CPUs. Therefore, PCIe bus traffic is minimal and does not impact performance in most cases. ”

So the answer is, for some, yes, for others, no.

jPo

This IS my blog!

[Mika Joon]

so the question in everyone’s would be: can this device work with Resolve, it two GTX 285 cards were installed in the Octane and connected to a macpro.

if it works with Adobe CS5, may be it can benefit the way Resolve operates too

another question would be : would Resolve support this.

I think this has got alot of people intrigued and interested.

Thanks

[Eric Fiegehen]

Hi again,

This news just in: GPU-Xpander will be available by end of May with x16 adapters + cable option. No pricing just yet. True 16-channel PCI 2.0 bus bandwidth and speeds. No joke.

On the subject of bandwidth mentioned by another gentleman yesterday, ExpressCard 34/54 is limited to PCIe x 1 – nothing Cubix or anyone else can do about this. However, at 5Ghz speed (if PCIe 2.0) and 1-2 GTX 285 for Mac or 1-2 Quadro FX 4800 for Mac, you’re still looking at considerably faster performance than trying to run CS5 MPE on MacBook Pro’s native graphics.

Keep in mind the product page you folks will be interested in once the site goes live is under the products tab, “GPU-Xpander Pro 2”, not “Xpander for Octane Render”. X for O.R. and supporting materials were developed specifically with multi-GPU Octane Render in mind.

Also, Cubix is building a list of tested/certified graphics cards, I/O capture, motherboards, etc.,. Check back every now and then for updates. First posting won’t be up online until next week. In the meantime, had my web developer post a blog entry yesterday that goes over this topic at https://cubixgpu.com/Blog. (please excuse the spelling error, will be edited shortly 🙂

Best Regards,
Eric Fiegehen
Director, Visual & GPU Compute Solutions
Cubix Corporation
Ph# (775) 888-1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (775) 888-1000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (775) 888-1000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (775) 888-1000      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, ext 276
Fax# (775) 888-1001
ericc@cubix.com, sales@cubixgpu.com

[Mika Joon]

hello everyone

and thanks Eric Fiegehen for your helpful information on “GPU-Xpander Pro 2”.

a few questions for me to learn more about how this could work with my setup.

for mac, what are the current programs that can take advantage of this system, is adobe CS5 one of them, if so how, would Final cut studio benefit?

also would like to know, if a program uses the GPU to run tasks, how would that program see the “GPU-Xpander Pro 2” with 2 cards inside, I guess my question is how do both cards distribute tasks between them, is there a controller inside “GPU-Xpander Pro 2” that allocates and distributes tasks to both cards, how would a program like Resolve that uses one GTX 285 work with 2 cards, or would it see “GPU-Xpander Pro 2” as just one single powerfull card, similar to how a disk array of drives can be set as RAID 0, where multiple drives can be stripped to form and be seen by the computer as one fast drive.

thanks in advance

[Eric Fiegehen]

At this point, Adobe After Affects and Premiere Pro are the only applications under Creative Suite 5 that benefit from Mercury Playback Engine’s GPU acceleration.
https://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/pdfs/cs5_production_premium_64bit_wp.pdf

However, to take advantage of these features, you need to have a dedicated Adobe-certified GPU specifically for acceleration plus your OpenGL 2.0+ compatible graphics card for everything else, plus your I/O capture card(s).

Adobe states that it provides support for both import and export of Final Cut Studio files. Beyond this, you guys would probably understand better than I do how it benefits the workflow.

Another pdf from Adobe which might address some of your questions is at:
https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/redsupport/pdfs/red_workflow_guide.pdf

This following page (link below) talks about some features which I think would really come in handy when combined with the portability of GPU-Xpander:
https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/integration/

As far as how the OS and computer BIOS sees the the GPUs and I/O capture devices residing within GPU-Xpander, it sees them exactly the same way it would if they were residing directly within the Mac Pro or PC workstation. However, your workstation now has a degree of fault tolerance it didn’t have before, even if you have enough slots for all of the I/O capture and graphics cards. You’re powering your computer with one power supply, the graphics and capture cards with a separate 750W power supply.

Hope this helps!
Eric

[Eric Fiegehen]

I just reread my last response, and I realized that I didn’t exactly answer Alejandro’s last post.

Yes, Adobe CS5 benefits from GPU-Xpander Pro 2 features. (see my last post for details).

If my memory is correct, Resolve is CUDA-enabled. If this is the case, and the current Resolve for OS X version supports multiple NVIDIA GPUs for acceleration and visual display purposes, then using GPU-Xpander Pro 2 will definitely benefit Resolve users (think quadroplex ‘lite’ – same NVIDIA GPUs, less money).

As far as how Resolve distributes various tasks among multiple GPUs, this would be a question better answered by DaVinci personnel. Within Adobe CS5 and Refractive Software’s Octane Render, you assign various processes and their output through the application’s setup procedures and the application window. It has nothing to do with hardware setup once the GPU hardware and its drivers are installed in the host workstation.

Eric

[Illya Laney]

“I’m not sure you you can possible get real-time performance from color grading with a remote renderer unless you have a high-bandwidth connection like infiniband though.”

Just finished my first Resolve class. Previous versions of Resolve run multiple nodes of 2k in real time using 1 NVidia Quadro Plex connected via PCI. They use infiniband when stringing together multiple Quadro Plex’s for extra power.

Motion Design, Color, Editing
SWGC Incorporated